Taking Cues from on High

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

As he did with many other things in modern politics, old Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch with megabucks and fevered ambition for his sons, may have played a part in bringing the evangelical aura to the modern presidency.

A few days after John Kennedy's election in 1960, Old Joe paced his apartment on Park Avenue in green slippers and bathrobe, trying to sound profound on being the father of a President. He was having a terrible time. So he switched the subject to Billy Graham, who had just played golf with the President-elect,down in Palm Beach and proclaimed to the press that "the Bible teaches that we 'are to pray for those in authority."

Back in the 1950s, Old Joe explained, he had been in Germany with Boston's then Archbishop Richard Cushing. One night in Frankfurt they wandered out to a Graham rally. "My God," recounted Old Joe, "there must have been 30,000 Germans out to hear this guy. I turned to the Archbishop and said, 'What's he got?' And then I said, 'Whatever it is, Jack had better get to know him.'" If memory is not too dim, Old Joe then said he had looked Graham up after the rally and suggested the reverend get together with his Senator son. Dutiful son that he was, J.F.K. did make it a point to cultivate the evangelist. Billy Graham and his like seem to have been edging nearer to the Oval Office ever since. Power attracts power.

Next thing we knew, George McGovern, the son of a pastor and an obvious chip off the old block, was running (badly) for President. Jimmy Carter (who made it) and John Anderson (who did not) were virtually lay ministers before and during their political careers. Now we are inundated with Presidents and candidates who have a strong evangelical tinge or background. Both Walter Mondale and his wife are the children of preachers. Gary Hart, who once planned to become a minister, comes out of deep Bible country in Kansas, attended a religious college, then went on to the Yale Divinity School, though he long ago abandoned regular churchgoing. The Rev. Jesse Jackson is a practicing preacher. He runs a presidential campaign like a camp meeting.

Ronald Reagan's godly fervor has been building during his three White House years, and there are moments now when he seems to be more a man of the cloth than a man of politics. He unabashedly tells people he is giving his remaining years to the Lord. Not only is Billy Graham still hovering around the presidency, but electronic soul savers like Jerry Falwell can often be found in the back corridors of the White House.

What's going on here? In the first 77 years of this century we had only one President, Woodrow Wilson, who was so clearly shaped by a church background. His father was a Presbyterian minister. While we have always had religious men, or those professing to be religious men, in the White House, the fusing of spiritual zeal and presidential power is a fairly recent development.

Viet Nam, Watergate, the uncertainties of the nuclear age, the breakdown of families and neighborhoods have all spurred heightened concern with morality. Both Democrats and Republicans claim to see the light. While a Mondale can reasonably call on Government to take some from the wealthy and give it to the poor, a Reagan can logically cry for individual responsibility and community standards of decency.

A lot of people are rightly worried about Presidents' taking their cues from on high. Woodrow Wilson's fervor sank his marvelous ideas about peace. Jimmy Carter's conviction that he had a special relationship with God and could get answers through prayer instead of the National Security Council may have been the biggest cause of his ineptitude. Reagan is at his worst when he is thumping his Bible and counting God among his Cabinet. He had best heed some old advice. "I am concerned to know not whether the Lord is on my side," said Abraham Lincoln, "but whether I am on the Lord's side."