An Enemy of Convenience
Liberals will miss Jerry Falwell.
BY JOHN J. PITNEY JR.
Sunday, May 27, 2007 12:01 a.m.
Jerry Falwell could always draw a crowd, and his funeral last week was no exception. In death as in life, he aroused strong feelings from all sides. But conservatives will miss him a lot less than liberals.
Although some press accounts have touted him as a major figure on the right, his influence peaked decades ago. He founded the Moral Majority in 1979. A year later, he claimed a good deal of credit for the election of Ronald Reagan. While the mobilization of conservative Christians did help the GOP, Falwell overstated his own role. He did attract a great deal of attention, mostly unfavorable. He could be smooth and articulate, but he regularly lapsed into rhetorical overkill and factual inaccuracy. During the 1980 campaign, for instance, he claimed to have had a heated exchange with President Carter about gays on the White House staff. A transcript revealed that no such exchange had ever taken place.
The name "Moral Majority" struck many Americans as arrogant and self-righteous. As Christian activist Ralph Reed once wrote, "if you say you're moral, you're saying others aren't." Polls showed that Falwell himself lacked majority support. In a 1981 NBC poll, 27% had an unfavorable impression of him, compared with just 7% with a favorable impression. The rest did not know enough to have an opinion. In 1984, Gallup found 46% unfavorable to 21% favorable. And the Harris Poll found that 59% had negative feelings about his efforts to help President Reagan's reelection.
Many Republicans and conservative leaders regarded Falwell as a liability. During the 1984 race, a Democratic campaign aide told Time: "Jerry Falwell is a no-risk whipping boy." Ed Rollins, who ran President Reagan's re-election campaign, later agreed: "Jerry Falwell, no question, is a very high negative." Politicians also noticed that Moral Majority was mainly a direct-mail operation and had never built much of a grassroots organization. With ebbing support from the political world, Falwell quit as president of the group in 1987. It folded two years later.
Since then, the religious right has had a complex political history. For a time, the Christian Coalition loomed as a powerful successor; and it eventually crumbled. Although conservative Christians took up a key role in Republican politics, they were far from monolithic, having a variety of leaders and viewpoints. Their activists came to see Falwell as a small part of their heritage, if they thought of him at all.
Liberals, however, did not forget Falwell. As a political consultant once advised his fellow Democrats: "Find your candidate a nasty enemy. Tell people they are threatened in some way. . . . It's a cheap trick, but the simplest."
Falwell obliged by continuing to supply fresh ammunition. In 2001, for example, he went wildly over the top by saying that God might have allowed the 9/11 attacks as payback for the nation's moral laxity.
Accordingly, his name remained a fixture in liberal speeches and fund-raising letters long after his actual power had shrunk. When he endorsed school choice and opposed abortion, liberals cited his position as a reason for taking the other side. When he supported Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, Sen. John Kerry mentioned him and other conservatives in a floor speech: "This right-wing reaction can only mean one thing: They know what kinds of opinions Judge Alito will issue in line with their extreme ideology."
During his 2004 presidential race, Howard Dean obsessed about Falwell. Mr. Dean once told activists that they "have the power to take back this country so that the American flag doesn't belong any longer to John Ashcroft and Jerry Falwell." On another occasion, he said: "Don't you think Jerry Falwell reminds you a lot more of the Pharisees than he does of the teachings of Jesus?"
Mr. Dean went on to head the Democratic National Committee, and as late as last month, Falwell's name was frequently appearing on the party's Web site. The most recent entries repeatedly attacked Sen. John McCain for delivering the 2006 commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University. These attacks had little substance: Mr. McCain was merely making amends for a gratuitous insult against Falwell during the 2000 campaign.
Mr. McCain did not attend Falwell's funeral. Neither did any other GOP presidential candidate. Instead of Karl Rove, purportedly Falwell's accomplice in the vast right-wing conspiracy, the White House sent an obscure aide.
In the wake of Falwell's death, responsible liberals reacted with dignity and restraint. Said Ralph Neas, head of People for the American Way: "We extend our condolences to Rev. Jerry Falwell's family and friends. He was an effective advocate for his vision of America, a vision with which we strongly disagreed."
On the other hand, much of the liberal blogosphere was gleeful. "PRAISE GOD, JERRY FALWELL IS DEAD," says one posting. Such comments are not only distasteful but politically obtuse. Over the last 28 years, mentioning the name "Jerry Falwell" probably raised far more money for the left than for the right.
Mr. Pitney is a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010130
