FIELD DAY:

Beyond Belief: Howard Dean's religion problem. (Franklin Foer, 12.22.03, New Republic)

[B]ecause Clinton hailed from the relatively conservative Baptist Church (as opposed to the liberal Congregationalists), he understood how to paper over differences with voters who disliked his positions on social issues, especially abortion. "With Clinton, evangelical voters no longer felt like they were locked in a battle against a secular Democratic Party," says the University of Virginia's Hunter. By the end of the campaign, Clinton and Gore seemed sincere enough that the Associated Baptist Press trumpeted them as "the first all-Baptist ticket for the nation's two highest offices." George H.W. Bush's share of the evangelical vote fell from 77 percent in 1988 to 56 percent in 1992. As a result, Clinton nearly swept the border states and made important inroads in the South.

Indeed, a case can be made that the Democrats' recent presidential success with Southern candidates is only secondarily connected to their geographic roots. Candidates who grow up in the South come from a world steeped in Jesus. Even if they don't buy the theology themselves, they intuitively understand the role that faith plays in people's lives; they have absorbed enough of the lingo to plausibly pass for religious or at least avoid offending the faithful.

Dean, on the other hand, utterly lacks this gift. In a CNN interview last week, Judy Woodruff asked him about his bike-path conversion. She seemed bemused over the story. "Was it just over a bike path that you left the Episcopal Church?" Dean told her, "Yes, as a matter of fact, it was." He explained how the diocese had resisted handing over the land for the trail. "One thing I feel about religion, you have to be very careful not to be a hypocrite if you're a religious person. It is really tough to preach one thing and do something else. And I don't think you can do that." As the discussion continued, Woodruff asked, "And you don't believe, governor, the Republicans are going to have a field day with comments like these?" Dean replied with unwitting clarity: "The Republicans always have a field day with things like this." Yes, they do.

The real story here--which the press seems unable to wrap its collective mnind around, just because he's "winning"--is that Howard Dean has thus far shown himself to be one of the most inept major party candidates we've ever seen. There's a huge difference between being personally irreligious and actually alienating religious voters--a candidate who persistently does the latter is incompetent as a matter of politics.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 23, 2003 6:30 PM