What's at Stake... and What Isn't

For anyone in this country who is committed to working for peace and social justice, a presidential election year can be a very frustrating time. On the one hand, the quadrennial campaign frenzy provides the one time in this most unpolitical culture when public attention is actually focused on great public questions such as war and peace, human rights, and the direction of the economy. This at least gives activists a potential foot in the door to have our views heard. But that opportunity is often outweighed by the fact that, in an election year, public debate inevitably comes down to the very narrow terms of reference defined by the two major parties. Social analysis is reduced to, "Who are you for?" and moral considerations consist only of weighing the fine calibrations of greater and lesser evils.

Historically Christians committed to applying the gospel publicly have responded in at least two very opposite ways to this election-year bind. At one end of the spectrum, the main emphasis is on being relevant and, it is hoped, effective. Toward that end many Christian activists simply locate which candidate or party shows the most commitment to social justice (even marginally) and then jump into the fray feet first on that side.

At the other pole of response, the primary emphasis is on being consistent and, it is hoped, faithful. Some Christians steadfastly refuse the logic of the lesser evil. Believing that government (or this government, or perhaps any existing government) is inherently violent and oppressive, they counsel non-cooperation with evil, often to the point of refusing to vote. Versions of this view can be found in both the historic Anabaptist and more recent Catholic Worker traditions.

These descriptions are inevitably rather crude caricatures of people's real-life choices, and most Christians probably fall somewhere in between. At Sojourners we have sometimes been the subject of similar caricatures. Some people assume that because we are based in Washington, D.C., and are vocal on "political" issues, we must be in the very thick of capital politics, especially in an election year. Others have assumed that because of our sympathy with the Anabaptist and Catholic Worker traditions, and because of our avowed skepticism about the last two presidential contests, we must avoid electoral politics as a matter of principle.

In fact what principles we have about electoral politics have mostly evolved out of our practice and don't quite fit the mold of either effective activism or consistent non-cooperation, though in some ways they are influenced by both. As far as I know, most, if not all, of the members of our community vote regularly. Some of us as individuals even participate in electoral campaigns. Our local work alongside low-income people in the District of Columbia has especially led us into extensive lobbying and other political work in the city around poor people's issues.

We participate in the electoral process because we affirm biblical teachings about the provisional role of the state in preserving order and establishing justice, and believe that representative democracy is one of the more tolerable ways to perform those functions. We also consider the exercise of our citizenship rights to further, in small ways, the values of justice and peace as being consistent with the apostle Paul's use of his Roman citizenship privileges to further the preaching of the gospel.

At the same time, electoral politics is an extremely minor part of our extensive public work and political witness. We see it as one very limited tool among many and far from the most useful or important.

In our reading of Scripture and reflection on our times, we have become convinced that the first and most important political role for Christians is simply to be the church. That is, to be a community where the person of Christ and the values of the kingdom are made visible and concrete. The very existence of such a community stands as both an alternative to the prevailing order and a judgment upon it. If the Christian community begins to merge its identity with that of the state or of forces seeking state power, it will almost inevitably begin adopting the cold-blooded exigencies of power and power-seeking. Then the church starts to become like salt that has lost its savor and is not good for anything.

Another central political task for Christians is that of the prophet, the independent voice of conscience speaking for the poor, the left-out, the persecuted, and the oppressed in any political context. The sharpness of prophetic vision is always blurred by proximity to power, and the credibility of the prophet ultimately rests on the moral authority of the church community.

Another biblical theme that gives clues for Christian political witness in our times is the recurring notion that God's word in history is most clearly heard at the margins of society. Among the biblical evidence for this view is the fact that God chose to become flesh among the dispossessed and marginalized of first-century Palestine and from that position of worldly powerlessness proclaimed a kingdom where the lowly are exalted.

A clear-eyed reading of more recent history only confirms the fact that redemptive and humanizing social change has rarely, if ever, come from the top down at the initiative of wise and benevolent rulers. Instead such changes have come as the result of agitation and outcry from below, often from the streets. This pattern can be seen in the abolition of slavery, the economic reforms of the 1930s, the recognition of black civil rights, and in the worldwide breakdown of colonialism in the last 40 years. These and other steps toward justice eventually found their way into the political mainstream, but only after irresistible momentum had been generated at the grassroots level and the changes had already become absorbed into public consciousness.

These are all strong reasons for viewing electoral politics with some suspicion as a vehicle for Christian political witness. But this perspective shouldn't necessarily drive us away from any participation in the electoral arena. Instead it should give us help in discerning when, where, and how to participate (or not), with our eyes wide open, fully aware of the possible pitfalls and without illusions about the nature of political power.

Given that awareness, different choices become appropriate in different situations. Sometimes participation in an electoral process, even by voting, can have the effect of perpetuating the illusion of freedom and false claims of democracy in an essentially tyrannical state. Within the last year, Christian activists in both Poland and the Philippines have called for election boycotts for that very reason. Even in the United States, a case can be made that because the two parties that monopolize the system are controlled by the same corporate forces and subscribe to a similar ideology of empire and profit, voting in their elections only strengthens the illusion of choice.

On the other hand, equally compelling reasons can be found for jumping into the electoral wars, especially when clear-cut choices are at stake on matters of overriding moral urgency. For many this was the case in 1972. Even some who worked for George McGovern for president that year had their doubts about what kind of leader he would make. But they were certain that, if elected, he would end the Vietnam War immediately, a priority that outweighed every other consideration at that point in history.

An electoral campaign can also be important if it springs from a genuine bottom-up movement for social change. Often such campaigns, whether they win or lose, can serve to break new ground and advance long-term grassroots struggles. Such was clearly the case with Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign this year. In the United States, this sort of insurgent campaign is more often found at the local level, where more opportunities exist to make an impact with a low budget.

In essence, choosing when and how to involve ourselves in the electoral process is a matter of having a strong sense of who we are and what we are about as Christians. From that vantage point, we can cut through the maze of mirrors and blue smoke to determine what is really at stake in an election and—equally important—what isn't. In the remainder of this article we will be trying to determine what is at stake and what isn't in the 1984 presidential election. That will involve examining the two major candidates with these questions in mind: What are their fundamental ideological assumptions? What economic and social forces do they represent? And what might their term in office be like with regard to a few key issues?

The Ghost of Reagan Future

In the case of Ronald Reagan, questions about fundamental assumptions are easily answered. He is one of the most ideologically motivated presidents in U.S. history. His almost otherworldly belief in the international communist conspiracy and his vision of a free market society (not just economy) are evident in practically all of his public statements.

Reagan began his adult life as a New Deal Democrat, but he gained his first political notoriety as president of the Screen Actors Guild when he led the purge of Communists and other radicals from that union. Subsequently, in the declining years of his film career, Reagan found a new financial and political base as a public relations spokesperson for General Electric. In that capacity he traveled the country giving polished anti-communist and pro-big business speeches. It was during his time with GE that Reagan's new identity as an ultra-conservative was solidified.

It was also during this period that he formed friendships with the powerful West Coast businessmen who were to launch and sponsor his political career. Reagan's core constituency is and always has been the very rich. For their sake he will even forget his beloved free-market ideals and allow them to loot the public treasury for private gain, as happened with the tax cuts passed in 1981. The poor, however, are expected to toe the laissez-faire line more consistently.

A second Reagan term will be a bleaker version of the one now ending—bleaker because his second administration will be free of whatever restraints public opinion may have placed upon the greed and militarism of the first. One is reminded of the words of Attorney General John Mitchell, who said after Nixon's 1972 re-election, "This country is going so far to the Right that you won't recognize it."

Within the first year, new and deeper cuts will probably be made in survival services for the poor. The economic position of lower- and moderate-income families can also be expected to worsen. Most economists, conservative and liberal alike, agree that the current economic recovery, fueled by record-high budget deficits, will be short-lived, and will end sometime in 1985. And regardless of the cyclical ups and downs, the long-term crisis facing the U.S. economy will continue to deepen.

The only answer Reagan's ideology allows to this crisis is further bleeding of workers and the poor. In a second Reagan term, we can expect that the always shaky federal commitment to equal rights for blacks, other minorities, and women will become a thing of the past, as will most environmental protection enforcement.

In the next four years, the military budget will continue its lunatic spiral. The whole current range of first-strike nuclear weapons will be deployed, plus new ones, plus space weaponry. Fear of the voters is the only reason Reagan has so far made even the most superficial conciliatory gestures toward the Soviet Union. In a second term, Reagan's most extreme Cold War rhetoric will run unchecked. He can be expected to push the Soviets at every opportunity, possibly raising tensions to the explosion point.

Similar belligerence could be expected in expanding and intensifying the U.S. war in Central America. Many knowledgeable observers consider the use of U.S. forces to roll back the Nicaraguan revolution a probability in a second Reagan term. In El Salvador the use of U.S. air support and an expanded role for an increased number of U.S. advisers are equally likely. Military preparations for both of these scenarios are already under way in Honduras. Either of these actions would deepen and prolong the agony and bloodshed in Central America.

A second Reagan term could also see a new wave of federal repression against dissident movements. Repressive tendencies have already been visible in the Reagan era in the loosening of restrictions on FBI political investigations and the recent proposal of "anti-terrorism" legislation which could be used against peaceful anti-intervention groups. Also a second Reagan term will result in further conservative additions to a Supreme Court that is already nibbling away at individual liberties.

Of course, there are some built-in restraints even on a president who will never again face the voters. One is the Congress. In a second term, Reagan will still have to confront a Democratic House (and perhaps even Senate). But after the Democratic House leadership's pathetic performance of the last four years, new courage in Congress seems a poor bet.

Perhaps the greatest restraint on a lame-duck president is the judgment of history. Every president wants to take his place in the historical canon alongside Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. Unfortunately Ronald Reagan, like any true ideologue, is convinced that history is already on his side. He and his allies will probably view a second term as a long-awaited historic opportunity to finally implement the agenda of the American far Right.

The Last Cold War Liberal

If Walter Mondale's ideological identity seems harder to peg than Reagan's, it is because from 1946 to 1980 his belief system was as pervasive as the air itself and therefore rarely noticed. Mondale is a classic Cold War liberal, perhaps the last of a breed that originated with Harry Truman. Adherents of Cold War liberalism have historically favored the use of state power at home to manage the economy, contain social conflict, and mediate the claims of rival interest groups.

Internationally, Cold War liberalism's organizing principle, as the name implies, is anti-communism. The Cold War liberals took the unparalleled military and industrial machine the United States built up during World War II and successfully turned it to the establishment and maintenance of a global empire. Even under Republican presidents, the Cold War liberals' agenda and assumptions dominated U.S. politics largely unchallenged until the Reagan era.

In the course of its reign, Cold War liberalism gave us Medicare, federal aid to education, public housing, jobs for youth, food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and civil rights legislation. All were measures which did some social good, but were also in large part designed to contain race and class conflict through compromise and co-optation. Cold War liberalism also gave us the hydrogen bomb, the peacetime draft, the Korean War, the intercontinental ballistic missile, the Bay of Pigs, the missile gap, the Vietnam War, the invasion of the Dominican Republic, the counterforce doctrine, the decision to deploy first-strike missiles in Europe, the MX missile, and military aid and advisers to the government of El Salvador. All were measures ultimately designed to contain race and class conflict around the world when compromise and co-optation failed.

Historically the reign of Cold War liberalism has been challenged by two streams of popular social upheaval, both of which eventually fed into the Democratic Party. The first was the radical movement of workers, farmers, and the unemployed that originated in the depression years of the 1930s but was still a potential threat in the immediate postwar years. The second was the black freedom and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Walter Mondale is not a product of either of these movements. Rather his career has often been marked by reaction against them.

Mondale's first significant political experience was the purge of Communists and other radicals from the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. That purge was one part of a general postwar campaign to stifle the radical currents still emanating from the experience of the 1930s. Almost 20 years later, at the 1964 Democratic convention, Mondale served as the front man for the Democratic establishment's successful effort to exclude the biracial Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation in favor of the whites-only regulars. Jesse Jackson must have recalled that fact as he watched his supporters being effectively cut out of the action at the 1984 convention.

Mondale was also a steadfast supporter of the Vietnam War until the Republicans took it over in 1969. In 1968 he again helped lead the charge in beating back popular anti-war forces within the Democratic Party, culminating in the profoundly undemocratic spectacle of the 1968 Chicago convention. Mondale went on to serve as co-chair of the Hubert Humphrey campaign, which lost the election because it refused to break with Lyndon Johnson's war policies. Based on this party background, it is not surprising that in 1976, when Jimmy Carter needed to assure the party bosses of his reliability, he picked Mondale as his running mate.

This year Mondale's very candidacy has been a successful instrument for the Democratic establishment in its final mopping up of the "excesses of democracy" that have lingered in the party since 1972. This can be seen in the way the party rules were rewritten in Mondale's favor and in the unprecedented mobilization of official party and union machinery behind his primary campaign.

As it lumbers into the fall, the media image of the Mondale campaign is that of a patchwork collection of social movements—feminist, labor, environmentalist, civil rights, etc.—often deceptively labeled by the press as "special interests." But with the exception of organized labor, Mondale's connection to these movements is largely election-year window-dressing. His real core constituency, and the one that will dominate a Mondale administration, is the small cadre of Democratic power brokers, best exemplified by former chairperson of the Democratic National Committee Robert Strauss, that serves as the liaison between big business and Democrats in Congress and the White House. Mondale even briefly joined their ranks himself during his four years in private life when he picked up a quick bundle of oil money lobbying for Democratic-sponsored legislation that forces consumers to foot the bill for the Alaska pipeline before it is completed.

The other significant force Mondale represents is organized labor. Mondale's relationship to the unions is both a positive and negative factor. It is one of the great tragedies of this year that the AFL-CIO, the United States' only national organization of working people, with more than 13 million members, has been tagged as a special interest. This political term had previously been reserved for the manufacturers of things like toxic waste and imported textiles. But the greater tragedy is that the national union leadership has often behaved in a way that makes the label, if not accurate, at least understandable.

In the postwar era, the American union movement abandoned its historic mission of redistributing economic and political power away from those who own and toward those who work. Instead a bargain was struck under which the unions received high-wage contracts and in return agreed to support the existing power relationships of our economic system and the militarist foreign policy it requires. Still, for all its faults, organized labor is the only potential buffer between workers and the giant corporations that seem bent on unemploying America.

A Mondale administration will probably resemble a return to the Carter years, except a Mondale administration will be much more efficient. If nothing else, the man knows how to get things done in Washington.

It is highly unlikely that poor people's programs would suffer any further budget cuts under Mondale, and there could even be some restorations of funding lost under Reagan. Mondale will also try to reduce the worst inequities of the Reagan tax package. And if there is indeed a 1985 recession, it will be met with some semblance of a public jobs program. But there will be no bold initiatives to redirect or reform the U.S. economy. As unappealing as Gary Hart's "new ideas" may be, Hart was right to point out that Mondale has no ideas for dealing with the country's deep-rooted economic problems.

Mondale is certain to repair the damage Reagan has done to equal rights for women, blacks, and other minorities, and he would probably undertake some new initiatives in those areas. He has already proven his commitment to women's rights with his surprisingly courageous choice of Geraldine Ferraro as vice-presidential candidate. A Mondale administration would also restore the federal commitment to environmental protection to the pre-Reagan level.

Mondale's foreign policy record is not encouraging, but he claims to have learned from his past wrongs. He now says that his support of the Vietnam War was the biggest mistake of his political career. Mainly he seems to have learned that the public will no longer accept sword-rattling and adventurism as easily as it once did. If public pressure is maintained, Mondale will steer a more humane and less dangerous foreign policy course than Reagan has.

Mondale supports the nuclear freeze proposal. He is also on record as favoring the "quick freeze" proposal which would have the U.S. president propose to the Soviet Union an immediate 90-day moratorium on testing and deployment of new weapons that would, if all goes well, be extended through the period of negotiations toward a comprehensive freeze agreement. But Mondale's freeze commitments should be viewed with some skepticism. At present he is a candidate having to answer to a very popular disarmament movement. If he reaches the White House, however, he will be surrounded by advisers schooled in the traditional approach that sees arms control as a way to manage a continually escalating arms race.

Still, given continuing pressure from the outside, some sort of negotiated freeze is quite conceivable; though Mondale's commitment to continued, though slower, swelling of the defense budget seems unshakable. He pointed to it with pride in his Democratic convention acceptance speech.

Regarding Central America policy, Mondale can probably be trusted to stop funding the contra war and try to come to terms with Nicaragua diplomatically. In El Salvador, Mondale is committed to making military aid conditional on human rights progress and to bringing the government and the Left opposition to the negotiating table. But human rights conditions for aid have been in place on paper for five years, during which 40,000 Salvadorans were slaughtered. If push comes to shove, it is unlikely that Mondale would "pull the plug" on the Salvadoran government, human rights or no human rights. His red-baiting of Gary Hart on Central America during the primaries showed that the Mondale of Vietnam is not completely behind us.

In other Third World hot-spots, Mondale would, for instance, reverse Reagan's favorable posture toward the apartheid regime in South Africa. But Mondale would be incapable of acting to encourage a just peace in the Middle East. He has never shown any sign of understanding the national rights of the Palestinians or their centrality to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In another area of Middle East policy, Mondale will be quite willing to use the Rapid Deployment Force in case of any threat to "our" oil in the Persian Gulf states. He went out of his way to deride Hart's principled anti-interventionism on this point during the primaries.

Taking Stock

This thumbnail summary of the two candidates should make obvious that neither of them is committed to the kind of basic social change that is needed to restore this country's social and moral health. No choice can be made this year without a measure of ambivalence. For instance, Walter Mondale is a strong supporter of abortion on demand, a position that we and many other Christians consider morally wrong. But many of us who are concerned about the whole range of pro-life issues also have our disagreements with Ronald Reagan's legislative approach to abortion and his cynical, political manipulation of the issue. There are simply no good answers to the abortion problem to be found on the current political scene.

Even with that note of ambiguity, at least three issues of urgent moral concern are at stake this year. These are the immediate fate of America's poor people, the prospects for an invasion of Nicaragua, and the growing threat of nuclear war. On these three issues, the differences between the two candidates are overwhelmingly clear. That fact must be taken into account by Christians in deciding what to do this fall.

But those of us who are also committed as Christians to working for fundamental social change that reaches beyond this election must look further. We must ask what effect our participation is likely to have on the movements outside, or on the edges, of the system—in the churches and elsewhere—that in different ways share that goal.

One rather cynical scenario for the movement in 1984 would point to the renaissance of activism stirred by Reagan's first term and suggest that another four years, while painful in the short-term, could be just the thing to spark a serious and unified mass movement for social change in this country. This theory, aside from its coldness, is also historically debatable, and in any case is by now irrelevant. The biggest movement-related forces are already either overtly or implicitly on the "anyone but Reagan" bandwagon with extensive voter registration and public education drives.

The importance the Democrats attach to these outside efforts can already be seen in Mondale's selection of Ferraro, his conversion to the nuclear freeze, and the tentative steps he has taken to satisfy black demands for power in the party and in his campaign. Traditionally presidential campaigns are won or lost on the state of the economy and the candidate's personality. Neither of those factors are working in Mondale's favor so far this year.

If Mondale should win, it will be in large part because of the activism and organizing savvy of extra-electoral grassroots movements, and because Geraldine Ferraro has tapped that explosive, newly emerging political consciousness among women that is being called the gender gap. And the gender gap is not, according to the polls, solely or even mainly motivated by narrowly defined "feminist" issues, but is also rooted in a broader concern for social justice and peace.

In both cases the black, feminist, and peace movements, along with other grassroots forces, would get a share of the credit for electing a president. That would mean a new level of credibility and clout. But that clout could either be dissipated by too close a proximity to the Mondale administration, or be used to keep that administration honest and build toward social goals far beyond the reach of Walter Mondale.

Danny Collum was an associate editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.