The Death of Politics

by Peter Wehner

  12.Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Characteristics of Families Summary,” April 19, 2018, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm.

  13.Personal communication, October 23, 2015.

  14.For more, see Alan I. Abramowitz, The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2018).

  15.Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017,” May 2018, https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201805.pdf.

  16.Justin Fox, “It’s Still a Slow-Growth U.S. Economy,” Bloomberg, January 26, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-26/it-s-still-a-slow-growth-u-s-economy.

  17.William Galston, Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2018), 68.

  18.Ronald Brownstein, “Being in the Middle Class Means Worrying About Falling Behind,” The Atlantic, April 25, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/being-in-the-middle-class-means-worrying-about-falling-behind/426033/.

  19.The average student debt is more than $32,000. “Average Student Loan Debt in America: 2019 Facts & Figures,” ValuePenguin, https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-student-loan-debt.

  20.Arthur C. Brooks and Gail Collins, “What Are We Voting For?,” New York Times, March 22, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/opinion/campaign-stops/what-are-we-voting-for.html.

  21.David Leonhardt, “Upward Mobility Has Not Declined, Study Says,” New York Times, January 23, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/business/upward-mobility-has-not-declined-study-says.html?referrer=.

  22.Fully 64 percent of Americans believe Congress has made things worse for the middle class, while only 8 percent believe legislators are making things better. Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll 16, April 5–9, 2013, http://assets.nationaljournal.com/Topline-Results.pdf.

  23.Galston, Anti-Pluralism, 72.

  24.Jonathan Haidt and Sam Abrams, “The Top 10 Reasons American Politics Are So Broken,” Washington Post, January 7, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/07/the-top-10-reasons-american-politics-are-worse-than-ever/?utm_term=.0a2ee0bb9df7.

  25.Jonathan Rauch, “How American Politics Went Insane,” The Atlantic, July/August 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/.

  26.Charles Murray, “The New American Divide,” Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2012, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.

  27.Lenny Bernstein, “U.S. Life Expectancy Declines Again, a Dismal Trend Not Seen Since World War I,” Washington Post, November 29, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-life-expectancy-declines-again-a-dismal-trend-not-seen-since-world-war-i/2018/11/28/ae58bc8c-f28c-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.6e14da4d781d.

  28.Wilfred McClay’s preface in Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Washington, DC: The Trinity Forum Reading, 2012), https://www.ttf.org/product/children-of-light-and-the-children-of-darkness/.

  29.Galston, Anti-Pluralism, 72.

  30.Bryan Burrough, “The Bombings of America That We Forgot,” Time, September 20, 2016, http://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/.

  31.Kerwin C. Swint, Mudslingers: The Twenty-Five Dirtiest Political Campaigns of All Time (New York: Union Square Press, 2018).

  32.Michael Wines, “It Only Seems That Political Corruption Is Rampant,” New York Times, January 25, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/us/politics/it-only-seems-that-political-corruption-is-rampant.html.

  Chapter 3: What Politics Is

  1.Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1985), 98.

  2.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b30, quoted in Edward Clayton, “Aristotle: Politics,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-pol/.

  3.Ernest Barker, ed., The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958), li.

  4.Clayton, “Aristotle: Politics.”

  5.Aristotle, Politics, 1288b37, quoted in Clayton, “Aristotle: Politics.”

  6.Carnes Lord, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Aristotle, The Politics, 1.

  7.Alan Ryan, On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (New York: Norton, 2012), 1:95.

  8.Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), 10.

  9.Ryan, On Politics, ch. 13.

  10.Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 70.

  11.It should be noted that Locke’s state of nature is quite different from what Hobbes described. For Locke, the state of nature was not synonymous with a state of war. In the former, people can live amicably, at peace and equally, with goodwill toward one another.

  12.See John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 66.

  13.See Locke, Second Treatise of Government, xx.

  14.“Meeting Minutes of University of Virginia Board of Visitors, 4–5 Mar. 1825, 4 March 1825,” Founders Early Access, Univ. of Virginia Press, https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-print-04-02-02-5019.

  15.Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Trumbull, February 15, 1789, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/18.html.

  16.John Locke, “A Letter Concerning Toleration” (1689), Constitution Society, https://www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm.

  17.Ryan, On Politics, 2:462–63.

  18.Lord Charmwood, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Henry Holt, 1917), 115.

  19.Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer (New York: Harper, 2008), 346.

  20.William H. Herndon and Jesse William Weik, The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, IL: Herndon’s Lincoln Publishing Company, 1921), 2:414.

  21.Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper, 1977), 211.

  22.William Lee Miller, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (New York: Random House, 2008), 5.

  23.Richard Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (New York: Vintage, 2007), 50.

  24.Carwardine, Lincoln, xiii.

  25.Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009), 43.

  26.Abraham Lincoln, “Address in Independence Hall,” February 22, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Online, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/philadel.htm.

  27.Mario Cuomo and Harold Holzer, eds., Lincoln on Democracy (New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 103.

  28.Cuomo and Holzer, Lincoln on Democracy, 122.

  29.For more on this, see Kenneth L. Deutsch and Joseph R. Fornieri, “Introduction,” in Lincoln’s American Dream: Clashing Political Perspective (Dulles, VA: Potomac, 2005).

  30.Lord Charmwood, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Henry Holt, 1917), 455.

  Chapter 4: Politics and Faith

  1.John Adams, “From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102.

  2.A. James Reichley, Faith in Politics (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 200), 94.

  3.George Washington, “George Washington on the Importance of Religion to Political Prosperity in His Farewell Speech,” Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, Georgetown University, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/quotes/george-washington-on-the-importance-of-religion-to-political-prosperity-in-his-farewell-speech. For a thoughtful discussion of this topic, see the speech by Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, “Religious Belief and the Constitutional Order,” University of Missouri, September 17, 1986.

  4.C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 65.

  5.Peter M. Robinson, “Hitchens—The Morals of an Atheist,” Uncommon K
nowledge, August 23, 2007, http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/uk_hitchens_atheist_transcript.pdf.

  6.Darryl Hart, A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 12.

  7.Sean A. Adams, “Paul the Roman Citizen: Roman Citizenship in the Ancient World and Its Importance for Understanding Acts 22:22–29,” in Paul: Jew, Greek, and Roman, ed. Stanley A. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

  8.Personal communication, July 2, 2018.

  9.Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, “From the Archives (April 27, 1961; Volume 26 Issue 10)—A Consideration of Synthesis from a Torah Point of View,” The Commentator, January 28, 2018, https://yucommentator.org/2018/01/archives-april-27-1961-volume-26-issue-10-consideration-synthesis-torah-point-view/.

  10.Quoted in Martin E. Marty, A Short History of Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987), 40.

  11.“Religion in Everyday Life,” Pew Research Center, April 12, 2016, http://www.pewforum.org/2016/04/12/religion-in-everyday-life/.

  12.Bradford Richardson, “Religious People More Likely to Give to Charity, Study Shows,” Washington Times, October 30, 2017, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/30/religious-people-more-likely-give-charity-study/.

  13.Simon Vozick-Levinson, “Bono: ‘I’ve Grown Very Fond’ of George W. Bush,” Rolling Stone, November 30, 2018, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bono-george-w-bush-world-aids-day-761747/.

  14.Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undecided/630416-019.pdf.

  15.The troubling trends within the evangelical movement certainly didn’t begin with Donald Trump, but they have accelerated since he declared his candidacy in 2015. Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell Sr., along with Pat Robertson and others, politicized and compromised the evangelical movement in significant ways in the 1980s and 1990s. For more see the book I coauthored with Michael Gerson, City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (Chicago: Moody, 2010).

  16.Gregory A. Smith, “Churchgoing Republicans, Once Skeptical of Trump, Now Support Him,” Pew Research Center, July 21, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/21/churchgoing-republicans-once-skeptical-of-trump-now-support-him/.

  17.Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “‘Their Dream President’: Trump Just Gave White Evangelicals a Big Boost,” Washington Post, May 4, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/05/04/their-dream-president-trump-just-gave-white-evangelicals-a-big-boost/?utm_term=.73bf7923a8af.

  18.Jerry Falwell Jr., “Jerry Falwell Jr.: Trump Is the Churchillian Leader We Need,” Washington Post, August 19, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jerry-falwell-jr-trump-is-the-churchillian-leader-we-need/2016/08/19/b1ff79e0-64b1-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html?utm_term=.fe95868251a2.

  19.Jessica Taylor, “Trump Nabs Endorsement of a Top Evangelical Leader,” NPR, January 26, 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/01/26/464435834/trump-nabs-endorsement-of-top-evangelical-leader.

  20.Tweet by Jerry Falwell Jr. (@JerryFalwellJr), January 9, 2018, 7:50 p.m.

  21.Quoted in “Focus on the Hypocrisy: Evangelicals Hush Up on Trump’s Porn Star,” New York Daily News, January 18, 2018, http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/focus-hypocrisy-evangelicals-hush-trump-porn-star-article-1.3765050#.

  22.Franklin Graham, “Clinton’s Sins Aren’t Private,” Wall Street Journal, August 27, 1998, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB904162265981632000.

  23.The defenses usually break down into the following categories: (a) through history God has done great things through imperfect leaders; (b) King David is a hero in the Bible, and he did awful things during his life, including committing adultery and engineering the murder of the husband of his mistress; and (c) we should forgive those who have sinned and fallen short.

  24.“Backing Trump, White Evangelicals Flip Flop on Importance of Candidate Character: PRRI/Brookings Survey,” Public Religion Research Institute, October 19, 2016, https://www.prri.org/research/prri-brookings-oct-19-poll-politics-election-clinton-double-digit-lead-trump/.

  25.Lydia Saad, “Military, Small Business, Police Still Stir Most Confidence,” Gallup, June 28, 2018, https://news.gallup.com/poll/236243/military-small-business-police-stir-confidence.aspx?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=military-small-business-police-stir-confidence&utm_content=o_social.

  26.Timothy Keller, “Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump and Roy Moore?,” New Yorker, December 19, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/can-evangelicalism-survive-donald-trump-and-roy-moore.

  27.A superb essay on this subject is Michael Gerson’s cover story “The Last Temptation” in the April 2018 issue of The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-last-temptation/554066/.

  28.C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 34–35.

  29.The idea that America is a hellhole on the verge of moral or economic collapse and that the apocalypse is just around the corner is melodramatic and hyperbolic. The United States faces some serious problems, of course, as it has at every point in its existence. But what goes almost unnoticed these days is that over the last several decades several important social indicators—including crime (especially violent crime), the divorce rate, and the rate and total number of abortions—have declined significantly.

  30.“Pastor Robert Jeffress Explains His Support for Trump,” All Things Considered, NPR, October 16, 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/10/16/498171498/pastor-robert-jeffress-explains-his-support-for-trump?ft=nprml&f=.

  31.Tweet by Jerry Falwell Jr. (@JerryFalwellJr), September 28, 2018, 8:50 p.m.

  32.Edward-Isaac Dovere, “Tony Perkins: Trump Gets ‘a Mulligan’ on Life, Stormy Daniels,” Politico Magazine, January 23, 2018, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/23/tony-perkins-evangelicals-donald-trump-stormy-daniels-216498.

  33.Martin Luther King Jr., “A Knock at Midnight,” sermon delivered June 5, 1963, recorded June 11, 1967, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/knock-midnight.

  34.Gerson, “Last Temptation.”

  35.Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), 42.

  36.New American Standard Bible, Romans 12:2.

  Chapter 5: Why Words Matter

  1.Alan Brinkley, “The Legacy of John F. Kennedy,” The Atlantic, Fall 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/the-legacy-of-john-f-kennedy/309499/.

  2.Quote from JFK’s 1957 Syracuse University commencement address, where he said, in part, “I would urge therefore that each of you, regardless of your chosen occupation, consider entering the field of politics at some stage in your career. . . . I ask only that you offer to the political arena, and to the critical problems of our society which are decided therein, the benefit of the talents which society has helped to develop in you.” Available at John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/syracuse-university-19570603.

  3.Most mornings the director of presidential speechwriting, Michael Gerson, attended the 7:30 a.m. senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room. On 9/11, however, I attended in his place. The reason is that Mike was home focusing on a “Communities of Character” speech. We were casting about for a new initiative and rallying point. After the senior staff meeting I wrote Mike an email summarizing the issues we discussed, including a congressional barbeque that was planned for the South Lawn of the White House that evening. My email to Mike began this way: “Very little of note happened.” That email was sent five minutes before the first World Trade Center building was hit.

  4.Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (New York: Norton, 1979), 147.

  5.Fred Glueckstein, “‘This . . . Is London’: Ed Murrow’s Churchill Experience an Anglo-American Friendship,” Finest Hour 144, Autumn 2009, International Churchill Society, https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour
-144/thisis-london-ed-murrows-churchill-experience-an-anglo-american-friendship/.

  6.Jill Lepore, “The Sharpened Quill,” New Yorker, October 16, 2006, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/the-sharpened-quill.

  7.J. Gerald Kennedy and Leland S. Person, eds., The American Novel to 1870, vol. 5, The Oxford History of the Novel in English (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014), 380.

  8.David S. Reynolds, Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America (New York: Norton, 2011), 90.

  9.Reynolds, Mightier Than the Sword, 91.

  10.Reynolds, Mightier Than the Sword, 114.

  11.Reynolds, Mightier Than the Sword, 114.

  12.Reynolds, Mightier Than the Sword, 130.

  13.Reynolds, Mightier Than the Sword, 150.

  14.“Donald Trump’s Rambling Sentence on July 21, 2015,” C-SPAN, March 6, 2017, https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4659595/donald-trumps-rambling-sentence-july-21-2015.

  15.Michael Birnbaum and Griff Witte, “Top U.S. Officials Tell the World to Ignore Trump’s Tweets,” Washington Post, February 18, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/top-us-officials-tell-the-world-to-ignore-trumps-tweets/2018/02/18/bc605236-14a2-11e8-942d-16a950029788_story.html?utm_term=.80bb3719443e.

  16.Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan, “Trump’s Real Plan for 2018,” Axios, February 12, 2018, https://www.axios.com/trump-plan-2018-culture-war-infrastructure-budget-471751f9-7548-4a8d-9c0e-33f509a4626e.html.

  17.Eugene Scott, “President Trump Says NFL Players Who Protest Shouldn’t Be in the Game—and Maybe Not Even in the Country,” Washington Post, May 24, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/23/president-trump-wanted-consequences-for-nfl-players-who-protest-racism-before-games-today-he-got-them/?utm_term=.f77e154d1cff.

  18.Eric Bradner, “Conway: Trump White House Offered ‘Alternative Facts’ on Crowd Size,” CNN, January 23, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts/index.html.

  19.Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump Has Made 9,014 False or Misleading Claims over 773 Days,” Washington Post, March 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/04/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/?utm_term=.a98f37cd7a07.