Democrats’ religion gap still wide open

By: Kasey S. Pipes
Mar 4, 2008 08:40 PM EST

Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.) (pictured) introduced legislation to prevent abortions and provide services for women who don’t choose abortion. Photo: John Shinkle

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During the 2004 presidential campaign, Terry McAuliffe first met Rick Warren. “And what do you do?” the Democratic Party chairman asked one of the most famous evangelical pastors in America.

Recounting this story in “The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap,” Time editor Amy Sullivan effectively argues that after the 2004 election, Democrats got religion. But their salvation remains a work in progress.

Sullivan begins by neatly summarizing decades of social history to show how Vatican II mobilized Catholics and the 1960s counterrevolution galvanized evangelicals. Democrats became the “individual rights” party, and Republicans became the “individual responsibilities” party. Not surprisingly, voters of faith more often began filling Republican pews.

Some Democrats saw the gap widening and tried to bridge it. Sullivan writes admiringly of Bill Clinton, a “Bible-quoting, Catholic-educated Southern Baptist” who called his 1992 platform “The New Covenant.” Here, the author’s tightly spun argument begins to show loose threads.

For many social conservatives, one moral issue is more equal than others: abortion. Yes, evangelicals care about social justice and human rights, but they care most about what they view as life at its most vulnerable stage. Indeed, evangelicals view abortion as a social justice and human rights issue.

So when President Clinton vetoed legislation banning certain late-term abortions, his “safe, legal and rare” abortion policy was exposed as more slogan than solution. This did not help close the God gap. Still, the author praises Clinton for seeking a third way: Rather than outlawing abortion, he tried reducing it. Despite her efforts to rehabilitate Clinton’s record, the evidence suggests Clinton was trying to reduce the politics of abortion, not the practice of abortion.

Sullivan offers faint praise for Sen. John F. Kerry and his efforts to reach evangelicals in 2004. When an archbishop in St. Louis announced that Kerry shouldn’t take communion because of his abortion views, the senator didn’t respond. “As far as Kerry was concerned, the matter was private, between him and the church,” she writes dismissively. Throughout 2004, Kerry spoke little of his faith; evangelicals responded by giving him little of their support.

To Sullivan’s delight, Democrats are talking about faith now. And she likes what she hears. In particular, she cites examples of how Democrats are navigating through the abortion politics maze. Yet her examples raise questions about whether Democrats are interested in the politics or the policy of the issue.
In Congress, Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.) introduced legislation to prevent abortions and provide services for women who don’t choose abortion. Ultimately, the bill was called the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act.

But the bill was first dubbed the Abortion Reduction Act. When liberals complained that this implied there should be fewer abortions, Sullivan writes that the legislators “didn’t bat an eye” and changed its title. This marks a breakthrough in how Democrats view abortion?

Meanwhile, Democrat Bill Ritter successfully ran for governor of Colorado in 2006. When confronted by abortion rights supporters, Ritter promised to do little to restrict abortion. Instead, he pledged increased contraception services. “His goal would be lowering abortion rates through prevention, not restriction,” Sullivan summarizes. But haven’t most Democrats traditionally supported contraception? What makes this a different approach?

In short, Sullivan rightly claims evangelicals want abortions reduced. They do. But she wrongly assumes prevention will mollify them. It won’t. Evangelicals want to restrict abortion, too.

Despite Sullivan’s eloquent attempt to dress it up, the Democrats’ policy on abortion looks remarkably similar to that of years past. Democrats still appear to favor life in words and choice in policies.

Sullivan correctly warns that Republicans should not take evangelicals for granted. As former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says, life begins at conception but continues after birth. The life agenda now includes stopping sex trafficking, helping immigrants, fighting AIDS in Africa and protecting the environment.

Democrats and evangelicals share common ground on many of these issues. Of course, the life agenda also includes opposition to cloning and euthanasia — areas where many Democrats and evangelicals profoundly differ.

Still, Democrats and evangelicals should get to know each other better. Sullivan’s well-written, well-timed book makes an important contribution to this evolving relationship. She convincingly shows Democrats have gotten religion, even if they still don’t quite get abortion.

Kasey S. Pipes wrote speeches for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and is the author of “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.”

‘Douglass and Lincoln’ and ‘President Lincoln: Duty of a Statesman’ portray a master of statecraft

HISTORY: New books portray the Civil War president as a master of statecraft

By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
books@dallasnews.com The old debate over how and why Abraham Lincoln waged the Civil War gets a fresh look in two well-written and well-reasoned new titles.

In Douglass and Lincoln, historians Paul and Stephen Kendrick examine the symbiotic relationship between the Civil War’s foremost black leader and its foremost political leader.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became an abolitionist, believed the war should be fought to end slavery. Lincoln, a self-taught lawyer who became president, believed the war should be fought to preserve republican government. For four years, the heat of Douglass’ idealism helped refine the steel of Lincoln’s actions.

The relationship began badly. In his inaugural, Lincoln promised to leave slavery alone where it existed. Enraged, Douglass called the new president an “excellent slave hound.” But here, Lincoln’s reach exceeded Douglass’ grasp. The president understood that he had to keep the border slave states in the Union. Lose them and the war was lost before it began. Lincoln’s thinking may have shocked Douglass, but it saved the Union.

As the war evolved, so did the president’s thinking, with Douglass’ help. After their first White House meeting, Douglass was charmed: “I felt big in there.”

The two men began an ongoing conversation about the war’s meaning. As the battles raged, the abolitionist urged the president to use the last, great untapped source of manpower: African-Americans. Lincoln did, and black soldiers helped win the war.

But the president influenced Douglass, also. By the war’s end, Douglass decided that only Lincoln could have saved the Union and ended slavery. The authors conclude that the abolitionist finally appreciated the political minefield Lincoln navigated and understood his effort to balance “public opinion and justice.”

In President Lincoln: Duty of a Statesman, William Lee Miller explores this intersection between Lincoln’s moral vision and his pragmatic actions. Unlike Woodrow Wilson, Lincoln possessed both idealism and realism. He wanted to do the right thing; but he also wanted to do the thing right. “The morality of statecraft,” Mr. Miller writes, “entails layers of action and an awareness of sequences of consequences.” Mr. Miller, a noted Lincoln scholar at the University of Virginia, re-examines Lincoln’s decisions using the bifocal lens of morality and reality.

Not one day into his term, Lincoln confronted his first crisis. Fort Sumter, a Union army garrison in South Carolina, was surrounded by rebels. In his inaugural, he had promised the South that the “government will not assail you.” He had also promised the North that he would “preserve, protect and defend” the Union. How would he do both?

He began by overruling his military adviser, Gen. Winfield Scott, who told him the fort could not hold. The president didn’t disagree. But he saw Sumter in moral, not just military, terms. To surrender the fort would demoralize the North. And it violated his own pledge to protect the Union.

Since he had also promised not to attack the South, Lincoln supplied the fort with food, not ammunition. And, in a masterstroke, he informed the governor of South Carolina, thus tempting the rebels to commence “firing on bread,” as he put it. They did. The war began. And Lincoln’s policies had matched his principles.

“Morality in statecraft,” Mr. Miller writes, “does not lead one away from reality but requires one to attend to it.” No American ever mastered statecraft with more precision, more purpose or more power than Abraham Lincoln.

Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for President Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality. He lives in Fort Worth and can be reached at www.kaseyspipes.com.

Stephen Berry looks at President Lincoln’s in-laws in ‘House of Abraham’

HISTORY: Intriguing book paints the president as a humane man dogged by a troubled family

12:00 AM CST on Sunday, December 23, 2007

By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

books@dallasnews.com Beginning with Walt Whitman, writers immortalized Abraham Lincoln until he became more marble than man. More recently, historians have discovered that his humanity does not diminish his heroism.

Lincoln’s relationship with his in-laws presents a particularly rich quarry, and Stephen Berry has mined it. In House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War, Mr. Berry connects the president’s personal and political battles.

It began with the first Todd in his life. Early on, Lincoln feared the instability of bride-to-be Mary Todd. Mr. Berry quotes Lincoln comparing his upcoming marriage to a trip “to hell.” Prophecy was not the least of the future president’s gifts.

He suffered her family, too. Of the 14 siblings in this Kentucky family, eight became Confederates, six stayed Union. And the Civil War stripped away the Todd home’s elegant veneers to reveal some ugly interiors.

Of the Confederate Todds, several brought themselves profound disgrace, including David, who desecrated corpses, and George, who brutalized black prisoners. The Union Todds also gained notoriety. Ninian Edwards, married to the oldest Todd, Elizabeth, was appointed by Lincoln as Springfield, Ill., commissary commissioner and proved quite corrupt.

But Mr. Berry wisely cuts a path through the thicket of Todd tragedies by highlighting Lincoln’s favorite, Emilie. As Mr. Berry writes, she “took the deepest root in his heart.” Meeting her years before the war, the future president noticed the little girl was frightened of the giant standing before her. Gently picking her up, he smiled: “So this is Little Sister.” The two formed a bond.

When the war began, Lincoln offered Emilie’s husband, Hardin Helm, a Union position. Gratified, Helm nonetheless accepted a Confederate commission. When Lincoln learned that Gen. Helm had been killed at Chickamauga, he grieved. One of the least religious but most spiritual presidents, Lincoln quoted David’s anguished words when Absalom died: “Would to God I had died for thee, oh Absalom, my son, my son?”

Little Sister visited the White House after her husband’s death and fondly remembered Lincoln petting her “as if I were a child … to try to comfort me.”

According to Mr. Berry, Lincoln’s family problems shaped his fighting of the war. He increasingly saw America as a family, albeit a dysfunctional one. Every family makes mistakes; but a family it remains. The bonds can bend but not break. He saw in Hardin Helm that noble fighters wore both blue and gray. And so he sought not a reckoning but a reconciliation. And when he spoke of caring for the widow and the orphan, surely he thought of Little Sister and her children.

Mr. Berry presents a textured, nuanced work that is reliable and readable. And mostly, he shows a very human president who loved his family in spite of itself.

Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality. He lives in Fort Worth.

House of Abraham

Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War

Stephen Berry

(Houghton Mifflin, $28)

March 26, 2007

Ike: The Forgotten Conservative

By Kasey Pipes Realclearpolitics.com

“His conservatism was fixed and rigid and any evil defacing the nation had to be extracted bit by bit with a tweezer because the surgeon’s knife was an instrument too radical to touch this best of all societies.”

So wrote Dr. Martin Luther King years after he met President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House to discuss civil rights. King was impressed with the president’s “sincerity” on the issue. Though the two men agreed on the goal of racial justice, they differed on approach. Perceptively, King placed a label on Ike that few others had before or since. He believed him to be a conservative.

How did Eisenhower, as a soldier and president, handle racial injustice? As the author of the book “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality,” released last month, I was surprised to find that Eisenhower’s approach to civil rights throughout his career was coherent, cogent and above all, conservative. It tells the story of how the greatest American hero of his time came to terms with the greatest American dilemma of all time.

Previous books on this the most controversial aspect of Ike’s storied career have given him little credit and less understanding. Some books portray him as indifferent to civil rights. He wasn’t. Others paint him as almost opposing it. He didn’t. Rather, the question for him was how best to reach a more just society. “Ike’s Final Battle” shows Eisenhower was largely in harmony with the goals of civil rights movement, if not in melody. Theirs was a liberal movement that sought dramatic change. His was a conservative administration that desired incremental progress.

Even today in some quarters, to call Ike a conservative is blasphemy. Indeed, much of the conservative establishment of today took root in the 1950s. National Review was first published in 1955, for example. And in the first year of Ike’s presidency, scholar Russell Kirk exhumed Edmund Burke from his grave and brought him to life in a book called The Conservative Mind. In it, Kirk told American conservatives that they should look to the eighteenth-century British statesman for inspiration.

One of the interesting attributes of Burke’s legacy is that he espoused a set of broad principles, but refrained from endorsing a specific ideology. That is, Burke didn’t have a conservative philosophy so much as he had a conservative mindset. He saw conservatism not as an agenda of issues but as an approach with which to deal with issues as they developed.

Eisenhower, though he might not have been a political conservative, was certainly a personal one. Like Burke, he believed in organic evolution, the idea that change happens over time, step by step. When Burke spoke of the “wisdom of the ancients,” he cautioned that decades and centuries of tradition and reverence for institutions should not be disregarded overnight. Like a coral reef, society is built up over centuries, eventually becoming a wave-resistant sanctuary for life.

And perhaps nowhere was Ike’s conservatism more evident than on civil rights. His journey on the issue began during World War II at the Battle of the Bulge. Here, needing more troops to send to the front, Ike went against War Department policy and encouraged African-American soldiers in the Supply Service to train for combat and be treated “without regard to color or race….” Many responded. And served well. Ike took note and later told an African-American aide during the 1952 presidential campaign that he was inspired by the heroic service of black troops in World War II. “They fought nobly for their country,” he said. “And I will never forget.”

But if World War II changed Ike, it also changed America. African-Americans who went to the front of the line in battle weren’t eager to go to the back of the bus in Birmingham. The civil rights movement gained new momentum. By the time Eisenhower ran for president, a civil rights revolution was building as new claims were made for equal rights in government, in business and in public schools.

Eisenhower’s conservatism can perhaps best be seen in the actions he took over the course of his presidency in handling civil rights. Even though he preferred the velvet cords of persuasion to the iron bonds of law, as president he did pursue gradual change.

First, Ike desegregated the District of Columbia. Having full constitutional power over the nation’s capitol, he effectively ended decades of segregation. He even pressured Hollywood executives to open up their DC theaters on a color-blind basis. They did.

Second, Ike desegregated the military. In response to Truman’s executive order in 1948, many in the military had dragged their heels. Eisenhower used his military aura to help finish the job of creating a desegregated military. Interestingly, Truman’s executive order in many ways can be traced back to Ike’s decision at the Battle of the Bulge, which proved that African-Americans were just as brave as any soldiers.

Third, Ike weighed in on Brown v. the Board of Education. He had mixed feelings about the case, worrying about the size and scope of it. But he agreed to let Attorney General Herbert Brownell file a brief on behalf of the NAACP that separate schools were unequal. When the ruling came down, he vowed to enforce it.

Fourth, Ike pushed for and signed the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. His only disappointment with the new law was that Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson successfully attached a “jury-trial” amendment so that whites accused of racial crimes would have the home field advantage offered by a white jury.

Fifth, he appointed fair-minded judges who would hand the civil rights movement its biggest victories for years to come. “The best civil rights judges in the South,” remembered Andrew Young, “were the Eisenhower appointees…”

Each of these steps was important. But none settled the issue. Ike had tried to move carefully, taking action where he thought he had the power and where he thought he could make a difference. He was trying to create an evolution. But he soon realized a revolution was coming.

Eisenhower had long feared that inflamed passions on civil rights might one day erupt into a “conflict of the police powers of the states and of the nation” and he feared that when that day came it might “set back the cause of progress in race relations…”

That day came in September 1957 at Little Rock.

When Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus obstructed a court-approved desegregation plan by posting Arkansas National Guard troops in front of Central High School, the nation faced its gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. All of Ike’s fears about “another civil war” appeared to be coming to fruition.

Yet he never wavered. He allowed Faubus time and space to reconsider. He met with him in person. He urged him to do the right thing. And at last, when no other option was available, he sent elements of the 101st Airborne to Little Rock. The nine African-American children integrated the school. The crisis ended. The civil rights movement had scored one of its greatest victories ever.

Eisenhower has seldom received credit for this victory because he seldom sought credit for it. He saw the use of troops at Little Rock as a failure, not a success. He was saddened that it had come to that. He later said that sending troops into an American city was as difficult a decision as ordering the D-Day invasion.

In later years, Ike continued to think about civil rights. In a private conversation with a friend he said that Barry Goldwater’s vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act made him “sick.” And during the racial riots of the 1960s, he placed the blame on the “glib assurances” of the Great Society that told people their “difficulties will disappear by magic….”

In the end, Dr. King had been right all along. Ike wanted to do the right thing; he just wanted to do it in his own conservative way.

Kasey S. Pipes wrote speeches for President Bush and Governor Schwarzenegger. “Ike’s Final Battle” is his first book. For more information, go to www.kaseyspipes.com