The candidate who could be in with a prayer

Press, 7 December 1987, Page 12

The candidate who could be in with a prayer

Michael White follows the evangelist with his eyes on the White House

TWO PUBLIC figures, both by the name of Pat Robertson, swept through New Hampshire recently each in search of constituencies with which to win the presidency of the United States.

At an insurance underwriter’s lunch in Manchester followed by a local housebuilders’ dinner at the Cat and Fiddle restaurant in Concord and a gathering of health professionals in Industrial Nashua next morning, one Pat Robertson proclaimed his secular credentials.

In his time he has been a Yale law graduate, a Wall Street analyst, met a payroll, created a multi-million dollar corporation, even founded a university. “If I had a board of directors which had run up a $2OO billion deficit, as Congress has, I’d just fire them,” he declared. There is barely a mention of God. The Pat Robertson who appeared before 750 wildly enthusiastic supporters at an Americans for Robertson rally in a fading motel a day or so earlier was altogether less a boardroom figure. "Nobody wants to start a war but, as General MacArthur said, there is no substitute for victory,” thundered the former television evangelist whose Christian Broadcasting Network is the largest cable TV chain in America. “If war was ever thrust upon us there is only one way to deal with it: get .in, win it, and get out.” For the umpteenth time there was thunderous applause. Not all the $lO-a-head audience were evangelical Christians of which there are only only 10-20,000 in Catholic New Hampshire. Some were mainstream conservative Republicans who had come to hear a powerful free-enterprise .voice declare there would be no negotiation with the Russians ’ while they remained in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, no "radical homosexuals” taking over the streets, “not a Federal dime” for family planning from his administration.

Dave Randlett, a professional organiser who defected to Mr Robertson from the camp of his struggling fellow-conservative, Congressman Jack Kemp, says: “This guy is magnetism. As far as I’m concerned, as a compaigner he is better than Ronald Reagan was.” But what has put the fear of

God into Mr Kemp and the other Republican hopefuls — even .Vice-President Bush, despite his credentials and his millions — is the mysterious, myriad army of largely white, born-again and Protestant Pentecostal (miracleworking), charismatic (speaking with tongues) evangelicals and ; ultra-fundamentalist believers in ’the literal truth of the Bible whom he hopes to lead into February’s lowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Robertson supporters have already locked up a majority on the procedurally-complex Michigan caucus. He is doing well in God-fearing lowa (winning a recent Republican straw poll) and though he has only 3-6 per cent in New Hampshire, George Bush’s huge lead is judged soft. If “Brother Pat,” as the faithful call him, comes third here behind Mr Bush and Senator Bob Dole, Mr Kemp is finished and a born-again Virginian is poised to do at least as well as a bornagain Georgian, Jimmy Carter, did in the vital Southern primaries in 1976.

Nobody knows how many evangelicals are out there, though Mr Robertson’s top-rated 700 Club show is cabled into 30 million homes and CBN is able to raise $2OO million a year in advertising revenue and donations. And, as with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition or the anti-war Children’s Crusades of Eugene McCarthy (1968) and George McGovern (1972), it is quite possible that a kingmaking success for Brother Pat in 1988, let alone his outside chance of capturing the nomination, would guarantee the Republicans defeat. The United States is a religious society, but it is rooted in a secular State.

Indeed, some regular Republicans now sport “ABR” badges — meaning “Anyone But Robertson.” Many regarded him as a

divisive figure long before this spring’s antics of his fellowevangelists Oral Roberts and Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker reminded Americans that religious hucksterism was a lucrative national tradition long before Sinclair Lewis immortalised Elmer Gantry. An “Atlanta Constitution” poll showed that even 67 per cent of Southerners had negative feelings towards his run.

In Manchester, Concord, or Nashua it is very evident that the 57-year-old candidate, lately repackaged with Madison Avenue’s assistance, is all-too-conscious of the dangers. Folksy, anecdotal and soothing to the point of unctuousness, he has long dropped all claims that he cures cancer and broken legs on television and successfully prayed for divine intervention to divert Hurricane Gloria from destroying his Virginia Beach transmitter in 1985 (or Hurricane Betsy long before). His wife, Dede, he reminds the medics, has a masters’ degree in nursing. Unfortunately his liberal critics have his florid past on damagingly Biden-esque videotape. “If I couldn’t move off a hurricane I could hardly move a nation” he once confessed. Candidate Pat has other problems, of which misreporting his wedding day to cover up a precipitate pregnancy is the most endearing. He inflated his economic scholarship with “graduate study at the University of London” (actually a three-month summer course on architecture). In raising $lO million, his campaign has hit trouble in keeping separate the resources of the CBN ministry from which the former reverend carefully resigned before running. In one of many highly suspect claims offered on the stump, he accused 25 per cent of American car workers of taking drugs. Potentially most troublesome of all among anti-Communist conservatives is the libel suit he has had to launch against a congressional liberal from California. Far from being a “combat duty” veteran of the Korean War, Mr Robertson’s senator father pulled strings to get him off the troop-ship into divisional HQ, and young Pat boasted of it, alleged Republican Pete McCloskey, a fellow-Marine at the time. Yet Mr Robertson is doing better than predicted. He is completely at home on TV and is gearing up a "Just Listen To Me” campaign. Those who do — even flinty Yankee sceptics in Main Street, Nashua — are grudgingly more impressed than they expected to be. “I feel he’s very sincere,” says a nice old lady. “I’m a grassroots campaigner,” says the candidate and he is. As for the faithful, Brother Pat

has pulled into politics a host of ardent souls long neglected or despised by mainstream America. His simple certainties (“I could teach any child to read and write in 36 lessons for $8 in the private sector using voluntary labour”) delight them. “He has an IQ of 137” confides one. “He’s related to Winston Churchill and two Presidents" says another. “A soldier in the next tent was killed by a mortar so he must have been in the front line” protests a third.

It is worth remembering too, that Mr Robertson was smart enough to see that evangelism was moving out of the revivalist tent into the TV studios back in 1960. He created a network which is now the enviable base of his campaign. Whatever else he .and his supporters may be, the candidate is no hick.

Indeed, his style and Rightwing populism is not so different, in principle if not substance, from the presidental campaigning of another Southern reverend, Jesse Jackson, who also

seeks to bring an even poorer section of the dispossessed into the mainstream at the risk of alienating those already there. Come to think of it, did not Mr Jackson claim to have nursed the dying Martin Luther .King In his arms and have to backtrack? Does he not also draw a healthy pay cheque? Outside Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shop I asked Mr Robertson if he and Mr Jackson were just the compaign’s “bookends” of the Right and Left, as one rival Republican had put it. The candidate’s face make-up was cracking in the cold and his handshaking thumb is already bandaged. But he grinned telegenlcally and was briskly dismissive. “No. He is on the far Left ! am much closer to the mainstream of American politics. I have a good chance of being elected President He has no chance at all.”

MICHAEL WHITE is a correspondent based in Washington, D.C. for the “Guardian.”