Factions of both typical American political persuasions wrestle with the importance of religion in the lives of political candidates. Republican evangelism discomforts progressives, but progressives must temper their criticisms to avoid sounding zealously secular. And the high religious standards in the Republican Party have friendly-fired about presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. What’s to make of this?
At this point, the debate usually splinters along party lines and becomes trite and annoying. Republicans stump about morality, values and character, and Democrats stump about the separation of church and state and the importance of pluralistic law. But note: these arguments are tactics of rhetorical persuasion. We should settle this like adults.
The honest answer is, at least for the task of governing, religion probably doesn’t matter.
In general, armchair political discourse is far too caught up in analyzing political leaders’ actions according to the “interests” of their parties, their bases of support or the constituency at large rather than analyzing the calculated strategy behind politics as a game to be won. That is to say, religion would be important in evaluating a president’s decisions only under the assumption presidents behave ideologically. But they behave strategically.
Leaders gain political power by building and sustaining a coalition of supporters. This is true from autocrats, whose coalitions mostly consist of a small council of military officials, to democrats, who rely on plurality or majority votes in open elections. Politics means you have to win before you get to govern, and this is true across the board. Political scientists study these coalitions in relation to political ascendance and survival in what is called selectorate theory.
So, what does this have to do with religion? Think about candidates like Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, whose votes they’re counting on and how they must communicate in order to get them, and it all makes a little more sense.
When progressives bemoan Republican religiosity, Republicans don’t care because they’re only concerned with bringing more Republicans to the voting booth. Similarly, when Republicans accuse Democrats of being too secular, the argument isn’t designed to appeal to Democrats in the first place.
These arguments are designed to create fear of a candidate’s actions once he or she has won the presidency, but even then, religion doesn’t matter. A president is going to act to preserve his or her support and survive in office as long as possible. It’s no coincidence every religious belief of a politician already coincides with his or her political ideology. And when religion and politics don’t coincide, politics wins. Remember in 1970 when our Quaker president bombed Cambodia?
It’s this simple, and it will always be this simple: a skilled politician does not follow religion when the religious choice does not coincide with the smart political move. When progressives especially become afraid a Republican will act irrationally under a stupor of faith, they forget whatever the Republican wants to do is already the smart political move to maintain the Republican’s coalition of support. And when Republicans are afraid a Democrat’s more liberal faith might poison his or her choices, the Democrat is going to pick the smart political move no matter what. Religion will have no net marginal effect for either party.
Want to know what’s messed up, though? A politician can always justify a bad governmental choice by appealing to the beliefs of the coalition, religious or otherwise. This is why politicians lie — because our inability to handle the truth gives politicians no better choice.
