Where The Democrats Come From
“I belong to no organized political party,” said Will Rogers. “I am a Democrat.” If it was ever true, it is true today. Yet somehow the oldest political party in the modern world, begun in the 1820s, continues to function. In fact, the party has done somewhat better than simply survive. It has been in power more than not this century, and Henry Fairlie calls it the “maker of modern America, and to an important extent the maker of the modern world.” It is awarded the highest praise by the compliments of its enemies: Gerald Ford invoked the name and character of Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan raises the banner (if not the legacy) of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
To Roosevelt, of course, goes the major credit for making the party the power it has been. Roosevelt stepped into the Oval Office in 1933, with a nation falling apart around him. Devising the comprehensive New Deal, he made the Oval Office—and Capitol Hill—the hub of the country and gradually set the disintegrating parts of the nation in motion around it. FDR was seen to be a man of compassion and vision. The black vote, after a half-century of solid Republicanism, turned Democratic. Wrote Robert L. Vann, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier (one of the nation’s largest black publications), “My friends, go turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall. That debt has been paid in full.” Much of the remaining vote shifted as well, forming a “Grand Coalition” that included city wage earners, ethnic and religious minorities, many middle-class and professional people, intellectuals, farmers and ranchers, and small businessmen.
FDR’s conception of government is at the center of the debate in this presidential election. Herbert Hoover was no different than the Presidents before him, Democrat or Republican, when he insisted right into the Depression that he was mainly the watchdog of America’s “rugged individualism.” Hoover said, “This is not an issue as to whether people shall go hungry or cold in the United States. It is solely a question of the best method by which hunger and cold shall be prevented. It is a question as to whether the American people, on one hand, will maintain the spirit of charity and mutual self-help through voluntary giving and the responsibility of local government as distinguished, on the other hand, from appropriations out of the Federal Treasury for such purpose.…” Roosevelt’s innovation was to do exactly the latter, to open the federal treasury, and to open it for the purpose that people would not “go hungry or cold in the United States.”
This policy has been followed by all of Roosevelt’s presidential successors, but it has been seen as the hallmark of the Democrats. Lyndon Johnson was typical in his declaration that the 35 million American poor “had no voice and no champion. Whatever the cost, I was determined to represent them.” However fairly or unfairly, Republicans were perceived to have other priorities. Eisenhower once groused of some of his more conservative party mates, “Don’t the darn fools realize that the public thinks the dollar sign is the only respected symbol in the Republican party?”
But though FDR’s legacy continues, at least to a large degree, his coalition is threatened (if not gone). The very diversity of the “Grand Coalition” has been a factor in its disintegration. Political scientist Lee Sigelman suggests that the diversity means Democrats are likely to suffer more defections in any national election than the more doctrinally agreed Republicans.
The “special interests” issue has been an acute criticism made against this year’s Democratic nominee. Struggling to forge something better than a maximum losing coalition, and to do it against master political blacksmith Ronald Reagan, that nominee could probably not say with a smile, “I belong to no organized political party. I am …” But when all is said and done, it is the candidate himself—not his party—who wins or loses presidential elections. And so we turn to the Democrat of the hour, Walter Mondale.
Mondale And What He Believes
The strongest river currents run deepest. Floating on top of the stream this election season is much verbiage about taxes, defense spending, and welfare. But underneath all flows the larger, more important question of a philosophy of government. Said Abraham Lincoln: “The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.” Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale basically disagree on how much and exactly what government can do better for people than they can do for themselves “in their separate and individual capacities.”
Social concern is foundational to Mondale’s conception of proper government. His father, Theodore, was a determined Norwegian who stuttered, but willed himself into becoming a Methodist preacher with a six-month course at Red Wing Seminary in Minnesota. “My dad’s idea of what you were supposed to do with your life was that your faith carried with it a responsibility for service to humanity,” Walter has said. The elder Mondale taught racial acceptance by deed as well as by word, inviting, for example, all-black choirs to sing in the churches he pastored. Walter characterizes Theodore Mondale as a “devout Christian, a believer in the social gospel,” and acknowledges that his father’s faith had much to do with his entrance into politics: “I wanted to fight for the things my father believed in.”
The fight began early. As a college activist, Mondale became a protégé of Hubert Humphrey. Rising from Minnesota attorney general to U.S. senator to vice-president, he has spent virtually his entire adult life in government. Fighting his father’s fight, Mondale concentrated on civil rights. He was one of the last Senate liberals to defend busing as a permissible tool for desegregation. Mondale was a cosponsor of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and would, as President, rectify what he sees as the Reagan administration’s “efforts to undermine enforcement of the act.” As part of his civil-rights agenda, Mondale would prohibit tax breaks for segregated private academies; “vigorously” enforce laws and court decisions seen to forward school integration and fair housing; restore budget cuts in programs for the disadvantaged; pass the Equal Rights Amendment (of which he was an original cosponsor in the Senate); and take “strong action against discrimination in the workplace.” He would “fully fund” the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal services for the poor. Overall, Mondale promises to protect individuals against discrimination on the basis of “race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, handicapped status, age, or any other irrational basis.”
Since the national press focuses on economic issues, Mondale’s economic plans are equally, if not better, known. He has admitted he will raise taxes. In a reversal on the familiar theme, a Democrat is berating a Republican about the budget deficit.
When it comes to defense issues, Reagan is not the only anti-Communist running for election. In the 1948 campaign for Harry Truman, there were bitter struggles within Minnesota’s Democratic Farmer-Labor party: left wingers united behind peace-at-any-price liberal Henry Wallace, and almost kept Truman off the state DFL ballot. Mondale was then disillusioned with apologists for the Soviet Union. “I realized that you can’t have a united front with a police state,” he said. In late 1948, Mondale became executive secretary of the college branch of Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal anti-Communist group. As with civil rights, Mondale’s views on the subject have been consistent. He was one of the final Senate liberals to oppose leaving Vietnam. At last summer’s Democratic Convention, Mondale’s forces blocked a move to include a plank in the party platform prohibiting a nuclear first use.
But Mondale does differ with Reagan on defense, of course. The same platform demands that disarmament talks with the Soviets be renewed, and declares that a Democratic President would work toward a mutually verifiable freeze on nuclear weapons. The platform denounces antisatellite weapons (Reagan’s “Star Wars proposal”), the production of nerve gas, and of the MX missile and B-1 bomber.
Mondale has promised a foreign policy based more on diplomacy than military intervention—a posture, Democrats say, exactly the reverse of President Reagan’s. To mention only one point, Mondale opposes the Reagan administration’s attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan Sandinistas as “dangerous and wrong.”
Finally, there are two issues that may concern biblical Christians more than other sectors of the electorate. Mondale unequivocally supports abortion on demand—a position he believes to be in line with his general advocacy of civil rights. “We can all hold our personal views on abortion while agreeing that the government should have no role in limiting the choices available to women,” he says. Mondale has vowed to oppose a constitutional amendment or any legislation that would restrict “a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.”
The second issue is church-state separation. Mondale opposed government-sponsored silent prayer in public schools. “As a preacher’s kid, I was taught that religion is a personal and family matter in which the state has no place,” he says. “I do not oppose prayer by children anywhere.… I simply do not want the state to determine if, when, and how we should pray and what we should say—if anything.” The Democratic platform supported the “principles of religious liberty, religious tolerance and church/state separation and of the Supreme Court decisions forbidding violation of those principles.” It pledged to “resist all efforts to weaken those decisions.”
What does all this mean for Christian voters? What is the case to be made for voting Democratic in this election? CHRISTIANITY TODAY spoke to several Christians who have some sympathies for the Mondale candidacy. The following analysis is based on those interviews.
Mondale And The Biblical Christian
“Serious Christians, thoughtful, faithful Christians, who wish for the gospel to bear upon all of the issues, will have a very hard time deciding who to vote for,” says Dale Vree, editor of the New Oxford Review and a political scientist. Vree observes that Reagan is attractive to Christians on issues of personal morality, Mondale on issues of social morality. Many Christians like Vree are sympathetic with Mondale on issues of social justice, war and peace, the environment, and foreign policy. But many of the same Christians are concerned about his stance on gay rights, and deeply disturbed by his position on abortion.
Bill Kallio, executive director of Evangelicals for Social Action, looks for a “biblical disposition” toward the poor in political candidates. Whether or not a candidate mentions the Bible, does he or she show a consistent and profound concern for the poor, the handicapped, or those otherwise needy? Congressman Don Bonker (D-Wash.), an evangelical, notes that “one out of ten verses in the synoptic Gospels deals with questions of wealth and poverty.” He believes that “concern for the poor is not a major theme in the Republican political platform and policies.” In its first term, “The Reagan administration has clearly shown that the political party it represents favors the privileged.” (Figures released late last summer by the nonpartisan Urban Institute indicated that income, during the last four years, did shift to the wealthier upper two-fifths of American families.) Kallio, Bonker, and others believe Mondale will be more sensitive to the needy.
A related issue is treatment of minority groups. Polls have shown as few as 10 percent of blacks affirming President Reagan’s performance. Reagan is also believed to have opened a “gender gap,” repelling many women voters. But that issue does not seem as clear as the wealth and poverty issue to these evangelicals. Says Nicholas Wolterstorff, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, “In spite of the fact that Reagan has opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, he has appointed several women cabinet members and a woman justice to the Supreme Court.” Stephen Monsma, an evangelical political scientist and former Michigan state senator, believes Mondale “would open up more areas for women than Reagan. Yet much of this condemnation of Reagan may come back to the abortion issue. I don’t think Reagan is really anti-women.”
For Wolterstorff, the picture is perfectly clear on environmental issues. “There’s as clear a contrast as any between Democratic policy and Reagan’s inclinations. Reagan is relatively indifferent. The Christian should care. We are tenders of the earth.” Adds Congressman Bonker, “GOP policies, especially those of the Reagan administration, are strongly prodevelopment and give only token attention to national and global environment problems.” On that count, says Bill Kallio, “The Democratic party has a better understanding of the long-term use of resources, a better view of the profit motive in business when gained at the long-term expense of the rest of society.”
These Christians are also more attracted to Mondale on the issue of war and peace. According to Dale Vree, “We have to have moral reservations about nuclear weapons for the same reason we are against abortion. It is the indiscriminate taking of innocent life.…” James Skillen, executive director of the Association for Public Justice, is dissatisfied with both candidates on the peace issue, saying they represent “pragmatic liberalism versus pragmatic conservatism,” but finally finds his sympathies “a bit more with the Mondale language than the Reagan language.”
Skillen is also worried about foreign policy concerned only for American preeminence in the world. “The growth of other economies is not seen as a healthy sign of global development, but the beginning of America’s decline,” he observes. The Reagan policy presents a “macho swagger,” says Stephen Monsma. Congressman Bonker contends that foreign policy has shifted from developmental aid to military programs: “Today 60 percent of our foreign aid goes in the form of guns and other military hardware. Alternatively, for every one billion dollars spent on defense, we could supplement the diets of 50 million undernourished children.”
Such factors, it might appear, would tend to tip some biblical Christians to the Democratic side in the polling booth. Yet there are severe reservations about parts of Mondale’s agenda, even among these potential supporters.
Abortion is primary. Mondale’s strong support of abortion on demand goes down even harder for antiabortionists after a look at the Democratic platform. Using the preposterous euphemism of “reproductive freedom,” the platform opposes “government interference in the reproductive decisions of Americans” and praises the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on abortion. It also recognizes that five of the nine members of the Supreme Court are over 75, and many new justices are likely to be appointed by the next President. “Today, the fundamental right of a woman to reproductive freedom rests on the votes of six members of the Supreme Court—five of whom are over 75. That right could easily disappear during a second Reagan term.” Stephen Chapman comments in the Chicago Tribune, “Is someone trying to stop Americans from making babies? No. That’s just the Democrats’ way of upholding the right of pregnant women to destroy their fetuses.”
Dale Vree admits that this issue may decide the vote for many Christians. “You could say nuclear war is a theoretical threat to life, whereas abortion is taking life every day. So vote to stop abortion today.” That would be a valid and defensible position, he believes. But, “You could also say that present policies may heat up the arms race so that it may not be more than a few more years before a nuclear war. An abortion can happen once, twice, a thousand times; the human race goes on, and you can still try to stop abortion. Nuclear war happens once. You could say the stakes are so immense you have to give it priority.”
The Democratic position on abortion can create a genuine voting dilemma for the biblical Christian inclined to cast a ballot on the Democratic side. Comments Stephen Monsma, “It’s the biggest bone in my throat.”
Also troublesome, though not as unambiguous, is the issue of homosexual rights. Mondale concurs with the Democratic platform, widely publicized as the boldest party endorsement of gay rights to date. Like all platforms, though, this one is vague in the statement of its position. It opposes discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and promises to “support legislation to prohibit discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation.” Most Christians are not opposed to civil rights for homosexuals. Jerry Falwell, for instance, has said, “I don’t believe that state punishment of homosexuals provides any answer whatever. I personally believe that homosexuals should be afforded total civil rights.” Stephen Monsma defends the rights of homosexuals to vote, worship, and be accorded public speech. In addition, few Christians would question housing rights for homosexuals.
What the platform does not even address, and what inevitably comes up in thoughtful discussions of gay rights, is the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behavior. To be a homosexual, says Monsma, is one thing; “To flout homosexuality is quite a different matter.” He believes a community should have the right to say no, for instance, to the teaching of its children by an openly admitted, practicing homosexual. “I’m uncomfortable with both extremes,” he says.
The question is complicated for conservative Christians, notes Dale Vree, because they were relatively passive about earlier civil and racial rights. Opposing gay rights can then appear to be a predictable attack on the freedom and dignity of an oppressed group by a collection self-righteous and self-centered moralists. Christians have to take care. “We are not proposing that homosexuals be persecuted,” says Vree. “We are all sinners. We want to recognize the dignity of man purchased for everyone in the Incarnation. But I’d be leery of any legislation that made homosexuality appear equally as good as heterosexuality. This is not a direct parallel to the racial question.”
As of now, the gay-rights debate remains open. It is not obvious exactly what Mondale would, if in office, propose by way of homosexual rights. Christians would support certain proposals and oppose others. At the least, the American system of checks and balances makes extreme and sudden change unlikely. Widespread public opposition could restrain whatever objectionable policies Mondale might present.
Lastly, what are Christians to make of Mondale’s understanding of the church-state issue, one especially pronounced this campaign? Judging by various campaign statements, Mondale roughly agrees with the Democratic platform enunciation endorsing past Supreme Court decisions on the issue. That platform promises to “resist all efforts to weaken those decisions.” To many evangelicals, these decisions have been stifling—less a wall between church and state than simply a wall around the church. Yet the Supreme Court decisions on separation of church and state need not be seen as separating religion and politics, says Stephen Monsma. The Court has “never said religious values cannot impact public policy,” Monsma observes.
As religion became a hot campaign issue, Mondale clarified his own understanding of faith and politics. He said the “President of the United States is the defender of the Constitution, which defends all faiths.” He defended the rights of fundamentalist political activists, saying that “There can be no rationing of the First Amendment,” and that he sympathized with their feeling that the past generation has seen “durable values give way to emptiness.” But he added that the “yearning for traditional values” has “undertows” that can turn it into a “force of social divisiveness and a threat to individual freedom.” Finally, Mondale resisted a perceived tendency to “transform policy debates into theological disputes.” He reaffirmed his own faith, patriotism, and family values.
Stephen Monsma wonders if the secular press has adequately represented Mondale’s own beliefs on the question of what faith has to do with politics. But if it has, he disagrees with Mondale that religion should have nothing to do with government. “Political decision making necessarily involves basic values,” says Monsma. How do we, the American public, see the world, and what do we want it to be? “Basic values rest ultimately on religious values, whether they’re theistic or not. So our political decision making necessarily involves religious values.”
Making A Decision
We are, then, back at the start. Who to vote for? In Don Bonker’s view, “Democrats are consistent when it comes to issues of corporate morality, but the party tends to give too little attention to matters concerning personal morality.… No one group or party can claim to represent the Christian political mandate. We must humbly acknowledge that each of us sees but a part of God’s truth.”
On this November 6, the kind of Christian represented in a favorite story of John R. W. Stott will be especially handicapped. That is the gentleman who told his pastor the sermons were too challenging. “Whenever I go to church,” he explained, “I feel like unscrewing my head and placing it under the seat, because in a religous meeting I never have any use for anything above my collar button.”
Deciding this election will require, in abundance, everything above the collar button.
RODNEY CLAPP
