Republicanism in 2012

Since everyone is very eager to proclaim the end of Reagan Republicanism, I think in the future the party is going to be searching for a new identity. Of course, I've lamented the idea of taking the solutions of the past and trying to apply them to today but at the same time you do need to keep track of what American Conservatism has been so if you go back to the pre-Reagan days you have the group of Eisenhower-Nixon-Ford. Certainly there are elements of this vein of Republicanism that are horrendous and you never want to repeat them but at the same time you are reminding of things like this and you realize that whatever fusion of ideas the party comes up with...looking to Ike for some wisdom and guiding principles isn't such a bad idea.

Barack Obama...Christian?

It's a question a lot of people are asking. If his faith is truly Christian or not based on an interview he gave. The answer of course should be who cares? At least in regards to the office he has just been elected to. If you want to express concern over the state of his soul, well that's a different subject, unless you want to take him at his word which is basically all any of us can do. My first thought on the subject is to paraphrase Martin Luther, that he would rather be governed by a capable Muslim than an incompetent Christian.

Then I turn to two of my favorite voices calling out from the wild world wide web.

First, Ross Douthat:

If you're following the interesting debate over whether Barack Obama is a Christian, one thing to keep in mind is the extent to which heresy of various sorts pervades American Christianity at this point - and, moreover, the extent to which it cuts across confessional, cultural, and political lines. The Obama interview that provided the grist for this conversation does indeed suggest, as Larison puts it, that our President subscribes to some sort of semi-Arian conception of the nature of Christ, which isn't surprising at all given that he entered Christianity through the liberal-Protestant gate. But heresy of this and other stripes is hardly confined to liberal Protestants. Americans of all denominations are pretty murky about even the most important theological questions, and thus as likely to offer semi-Arian (or semi-Pelagian, or semi-Nestorian, or what-have-you) formulations out of ignorance as out of considered belief. And of course a distinctively American strand of heresy is integral to a large swathe of what we think of as "conservative" Christianity: You could call it Americanism or Moralistic Therapeutic Deism or something else entirely, but whatever label you choose it owes as much to Emerson, Hegel and Norman Vincent Peale as to Nicaea and Chalcedon, and its emanations and penumbras influence everything from the prosperity gospel to the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

Now it's true that if he had been asked about Christ's nature, Bush - or Ronald Reagan, to take another conservative President with an idiosyncratic religious sensibility - might have given a more Nicaean answer than Obama did in the interview in question. But then again maybe not! (And God only knows what John McCain, the most pagan Presidential contender we've had in some time, might have said.) Given the muddled way in which most Americans approach religion, and the pervasiveness of heterodoxy, I suppose I'm basically with Alan Jacobs: I think that figuring out exactly what sort of things Obama believes about God and Christ and everything else, and how those beliefs may affect his Presidency, is ultimately a more profitable pursuit than arguing about whether he should be allowed to call himself a Christian. Or put another way: I expect my Presidents to be heretics, but I think it matters a great deal what kind of heretics they are.

Second, Alan Jacobs:

Is Barack Obama a Christian? Rod has all the links to the various participants in the controversy. My view is this: the President-elect claims to be a Christian, and I take him — I think I have to take him — at his word. Could he be lying? Could he be self-deceived? Could he have a limited or erroneous understanding of what Christianity is? Yes to all three. But then, the same doubts could be directed at anyone who claims to be a Christian, including me.

We’re not mind-readers, and the attempt to discover just how much fit there is between someone’s profession of faith and the state of his heart and mind is a mug’s game. In the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards nearly drove himself and his congregation nuts by his determination to withhold Communion from people unless he could be absolutely sure that they were truly and deeply believers. The problem with this approach was neatly summed by a century earlier by the great Richard Baxter — coiner of the phrase “mere Christianity” — who took the opposite view from Edwards. If congregants do “by word of mouth say, that they believe with a saving Faith, these words are but signs of their minds; and whether counterfeit or not, the Church cannot tell.” Even if they manifest good works and pious utterances, they could be doing so for reasons unconnected to faith — the desire for social approval in a Christian community, for instance.

So when people say “I am a Christian” I accept them at their word, just as I hope that they accept me at my word when I make the same claim.

But the conversation doesn't have to end there, does it? It seems to me that, having taken President-elect Obama at his word when he claims the Christian faith, we can then go on to discuss what he thinks Christianity is, who he thinks who Jesus is, what obligations he believes a Christian takes on by virtue of being a Christian, and so on. And as that conversation proceeds we might say to him that we think his understanding of Christianity sadly limited, or the place of Christ in his theology to be insufficient and wrong-headed, or whatever. (Those are the kinds of things I would probably say to the President-elect if we were having such a conversation.) And he might point out to us flaws in our own theologies — we’d have to be prepared for that, wouldn't we? The debate might go on a while. But I think the conversation will be healthier and more productive if no one starts it by denying the other the status of Christian.

The more you think about how every Christian is pretty uneducated when it comes to multitude of arguments that have been held about the person of Jesus or some theological issue in the history of the church...the more you should fear applying religious tests to political figures or hoping for a theocracy. Who's God would we end up putting over the top of us all. Then you come back to realizing how amazing it was that the Founding Fathers designed a solution for precisely this problem: Govern to the best of humanity's understanding and live your personal lives piously. It works out the best way.

Thoughts on Election Day

1. It almost seems surreal that we are finally going to decide this thing. I know I'm not alone in feeling like this contest has been going on forever?

2. It looks like it will be an easy win for Obama and we may have an anti-climactic ending by early afternoon.

3. I'm wondering how long it will take for the disillusion to set in on the behalf of the Obama movement. He is after all, merely a man, though extremely gifted and talented, and the challenges facing this land are of such a great magnitude. He's bound to disappoint and perhaps sooner rather than later. If you are looking for the Messiah, I believe he's already been here and is still at work but he's not running for President.

4. As someone who really truly is by nature a conservative person I find myself thinking along similar lines as Ross Douthat, another blogger I read daily when he writes all of this:

Conservatism in the United States faces a series of extremely knotty problems at the moment. How do you restrain the welfare state at a time when the entitlements we have are broadly popular, and yet their design puts them on a glide path to insolvency? How do you respond to the socioeconomic trends - wage stagnation, social immobility, rising health care costs, family breakdown, and so forth - that are slowly undermining support for the Reaganite model of low-tax capitalism? How do you sell socially-conservative ideas to a moderate middle that often perceives social conservatism as intolerant? How do you transform an increasingly white party with a history of benefiting from racially-charged issues into a party that can win majorities in an increasingly multiracial America? etc. Watching the McCain campaign, you'd barely even know that these problems exist, let alone that conservatives have any idea what to do about them. But there were people in the Bush Administration who did understand the situation facing the Right, and set out to wrestle with these challenges - and as a result, George W. Bush had a real chance (especially given the political capital he enjoyed after 9/11) to establish a model for center-right governance in the post-Reagan era. That he failed is by no means the greatest tragedy of the last eight years, but it is a tragedy nonetheless - for conservatives, and for the country.I'm not counseling despair here: There were people in 1976 who thought Richard Nixon had irrevocably squandered the chance to build a new right-of-center majority, and looked how that turned out. But for now, as America goes to the polls, I find myself stuck thinking about the lost opportunities of the last eight years, and the possibility that they may not come round again.

Maybe the Reagan model is obsolete as the world has changed. Maybe the left has the better ideas for how the economy should function at this point in time, just like Reagan had the right ideas 30 years ago. I'm willing to give them a shot. Socially, I wonder along similar lines...how do you explain that you think traditional values are actually better when for the past 40 years it seems like everything progressive has worked out just fine and some traditional values seem to fly in the face of science, man's best attempt at understanding the Universe. I'm not ready to throw out the totality of 6000 years of collective human wisdom simply because it's been proven wrong a few times (i.e., racism, etc.) and because we've managed to remedy a lot of the costs and negative externalities of the choices of our parents' generation.

Couple that with the idea that an Obama election assures us of an undivided Congress and White House. I fear this nearly as much as I fear extending the policies of the first six years of Bush's time in the White House. Look, the fact is Burke was right, power corrupts. Both sides have their excesses, and I'm sure the Democrats are going to make some mistakes during their time in power. I think the record of my lifetime proves a pretty valuable example of the fact that our government charts the best course when the Democrats and Republicans share power. Reagan/Bush and the Democratic Congress in the 80s and early 90s and the Clinton/Gingrich years from '94 through the end of his term. (Even the last two years of W. Bush, which people will one day look back on and see in a much more positive light.)

5. With all of that in mind, I'm two for two in presidential elections. Here's hoping I can continue batting 1.000%. A crazy world indeed, ain't it? An exciting one too!