Born-again George Bush wooing the God squad

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 21

Born-again George Bush wooing the God squad

By

SIMON HOGGART

of the “Observer”

It was an athletic week for George Bush. On Monday, he spoke at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King used to preach. In front of his black audience, Bush called for an end to apartheid. By Friday he had leapt nimbly across the political spectrum and was back in Washington addressing followers of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the man who last year called Bishop Desmond Tutu a “phoney.” All of which proves that there is very little Bush will not do in his unswerving pursuit of the 1988 Republican nomination. Vice-Presidents don’t have much to do anyway, and Bush is making full use of his leisure.

No boot can kick him so hard that he will not lick it. Last' month he spoke at a commemorative dinner for William Loeb, the vitriolic (and deceased) New Hampshire newspaper editor whose vicious attacks on Bush significantly contributed to his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Since those days, Bush has become more Reaganite than Reagan. He drops the President’s name in the hushed tones that Moses might talk about his acquaintance, God. He doesn’t just bathe in the reflected glory, he wallows in it. There is a tradition in America that incumbents who cannot stand again bequeath their posts to their wives. Reagan may be the first to hand over to his poodle. Bush’s strategy is fairly clear, and is confirmed by his aides. Republicans with long memories still recall him as an independ-ent-minded liberal. Therefore, the principal threat will come from the party’s Right. In order to win, Bush must break up in advance any Right-wing coalition forming behind, say, Jack Kemp, who is also already running hard.

The religious Right is an important force in Republican politics these days. Now that Bush has collared Falwell’s endorsement, Kemp’s job will be that much harder. Hence Bush’s grateful appearence at Falwell’s new “Liberty Federation,” smiling that strange rectangular

smile of his, like a chromeplated letter-box, and saying he was “very, very pleased to be here.”

And no doubt his host was pleased to see him. The audience —- of smart young men of the kind who wear ties and waistcoats, and women with glazed skins, like hams made ready for baking — cheered him eagerly. Though evangelical conservatism shows no signs of going away, Jerry Falwell has had a rough 12 months.

His Bishop Tutu remark got him condemned in almost every newspaper in America. A popularity survey of all well known public figures by a Republican pollster late last year placed him 21st out of 21, comfortably below Jane Fonda and George Wallace of Alabama. Worst of all for someone who claims political influence, the candidate Falwell backed for governor of his home state, Virginia, not only lost, but was trounced.

This is probably one reason why Falwell has subsumed his “moral majority” into the “Liberty Federation.”

‘We figure that people who are doing well don’t change the name of their organisation,” says David Kusnet of the liberal pressure group People for the American Way, which closely monitors the evangelical Right. “Liberty Federation is the New Coke of 1986,” says Kusnet, who reckons that Falwell’s problems stem largely from his support for P. W. Botha and President Marcos. “His benefit tour for tyrants in trouble did him no g00d...” Falwell admits to receiving around SUS 7 million a year from the public, though he has recently said that donations have been dropping. There are fads in political causes, like anything else: according to professional fundraisers, pornography and abortion are now doing less well than the Nicaraguan Contras and Star Wars, another good reason for Falwell to be more openly political. He is also being hard pressed by the current star TV preacher, Pat Robertson, who has his own

Christian broadcasting network and a daily 90-minute morning TV programme. Robertson does not only wish to be a king-maker — he has said that he would like to be President, and there are plenty of people who take his candidature seriously.

Robertson’s show is called the "700 Club,” a nostalgic reference to the number of supporters he originally tried to enlist. His network now claims to reach 29 million homes. The show is a mixture of simplistic anti-com-munist reporting, prayer and fundraising of a type which would seem crude to the vendors of Joan the Wad, the good-luck pixie.

It is stated bluntly and often that God will repay according to the size of your donation, and the viewers are told stories about (unnamed) folk who gave their last few dollars and were consequently cured of cancer, or passed their exams, or came into inheritance.

Robertson’s greatest asset is thought to be his television manner, and certainly, his relaxed style, air of calm certainty and shaky grasp of the issues does remind one of the Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan.

With his own TV network and a claimed cash-flow of $230 million a year, Robertson would have enormous advantages as a candidate, though his main handicap would the fact that he is ingenue in the political world.

Falwell and Robertson are very close doctrinally, though there are some marginal political differences: Robertson, for example, appears to back Mrs Aquino in the Philippine elections on the ground that she is less likely to encourage the communists rebels. Both agree that there must be no deals with Moscow.

The problem for former liberals like Bush is that they can either ride the tiger of the

religious Right or fight it. Either way they risk being gobbled up. The polls suggest that the evangelicals deter uncommitted floating voters (“people want Jerry Falwell’s endorsement like they want a social disease,” says Kusnet) yet they may be essential to win the nomination in the first place. Another problem is that America’s TV evangelists are not merely fundamentalist. They all adhere to the doctrine of “dispensationalism” which was first promulgated by the Plymouth Brethren in Britain in the 1830 s and which is now deeply rooted here.

These people believe that the Bible is an almanac, chronicling future events which will culminate in Armageddon, the last battle, where Christ will lead the born-again to victory against the anti-Christ.

Nuclear war, originating in the Middle East, and the destruction of the Soviet Union, are all stages leading up to Armageddon and—according to the fundamentalists—prophesied in detail in the Bible. Born-again Christians will escape death, having been “raptured” from Earth to join Jesus in the heavens. In other words, far from fearing nuclear war, many of them regard it as part of God’s preordained plan. Robertson and Falwell have described these events in detail, though over the past three years both have stopped discussing them in public.

According to the Christie Institute, an interdenominational think tank in Washington, Ronald Reagan has also shown a keen interest in these forecasts, having been told about them by his friend Pat Boone, the fundamentalist Christian singer. (The Bible is, incidently, supposed to prophesy the return of the Holy Roman Empire, led by the antiChrist. Modem fundamentalists identify this with the E.E.C., which covers much of the same territory as the old Roman Empire — a view which may or may not explain the Westland helicopter company affair.) The people who believe this — or even give it any credibility at all — remain a small minority of Americans. It is significant that a highly educated, intelligent and once thoughtful man like George Bush should feel it is essential t 6 court them if he is to be sworn in as President in three years time.

His threat is from the right

Riding the tiger...