It was a pivotal election. The White House was in the hands of a liberal progressive, a man who infuriated traditionalists with his betrayal of family values. As the contest intensified, the nation became polarized as it had not been in decades. Equality for women, gay rights and expansive welfare battled conventional mores and conservative fiscal policies. It was a war that was no longer civil, pitched as if existence itself hung in the balance.
Soon the American people would decide. It seemed they would choose the fate of the world, even the fate of the one to come. In the middle of it all, a foreign power staked a claim.
This was 1979. The liberal incumbent was Jimmy Carter. The foreign power was Israel.
A maximalist ideology.
The story begins not long after Carter’s inauguration in 1977, when Israel elected the Likud Party to office for the first time. The new prime minister was Menachem Begin, formerly the leader of pre-state Zionism’s notorious militant organization, the Irgun.
During the British Mandate, the Irgun demanded unhindered immigration and rapid settlement of Jews. At the same time, Begin and his brethren adhered to a strikingly maximalist ideology, cherishing the hope of a Jewish state that would sit astride both banks of the Jordan River. In other words, they believed that Israel should include the West and East banks, encompassing the entire Kingdom of Jordan. If every one of the world’s Jews were to come home, they’d need lots of room, wouldn’t they? And the Arabs? They would have to grow accustomed to Jewish-majority rule.
Meanwhile among the Arabs.
To be fair, the Western powers had only recently created Jordan, Syria and Iraq. None of them existed previously as independent states. They only came into being when Britain and France made them up to satisfy promises made during the Great War. To be specific, it was the Hashemites, Lawrence of Arabia’s friends, to whom Britain pledged countries of their own.
This arrangement was by no means as natural as it may appear. For although the Hashemite clan was Arab and Muslim, they were nonetheless outsiders. They had no natural connection to their new kingdoms nor to their diverse populations. In fact, until the war, the Hashemite family spent more time in Istanbul than Arabia. The putative princes got their education in French, not Arabic.
In spite of this, the new monarchs took their thrones as was agreed at the Versailles Peace Conference. Before long, new maps appeared showing a Middle East as it never was before. Turmoil ensued. No wonder then, that the Irgun regarded the West’s cavalier drawing of borders as an opportunity: If fictitious kingdoms could be handed out to foreign princes, why couldn’t the Jews regain all their ancient lands?
One of us.
Whatever the validity of its claims, the Irgun’s tactics were nothing but harsh. Most famously, Begin’s group hanged captured British soldiers and bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 94 people. He even attempted the assassination of German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. President Carter knew very well Begin’s role in all this. “I had not dreamed that Menachem Begin, once declared by Great Britain to be a foremost terrorist leader in the region, would win the election that May and become Israel’s leader,” Carter wrote.
The wary American president was not therefore surprised as the new Israeli prime minister accelerated Jewish settlements in the West Bank. This was in keeping with his ideological roots and to be expected. Of course, Begin never referred to the area as the West Bank. For him it was always Judea and Samaria, biblical terminology that Begin used to clarify a nationalistic ideal rooted in ancient, not modern history.
Such language wasn’t only for Israelis, however. Judea and Samaria were terms redolent of American Sunday schools, serving to identify Mr. Begin as “one of us” to millions of American Christians. He struck a powerful chord among those who believed that Israel’s 20th century revival was an actualization of biblical prophecy.
The tongue of prophets.
Indeed, Prime Minister Begin spoke the prophetic language of millions of Americans with far greater clarity than Carter. Not that the president was unfamiliar with it. After all, he was a Born Again believer and a Sunday school teacher from the South. He understood this language all too well, which is why he refused to exploit it. Jimmy Carter did not regard the presidency as a venue for millenarian ambitions or ultimate solutions. This became very evident as Carter moved to press the Israelis into hard concessions towards the West Bank Arabs. His stance was most unbiblical.
It began with an unprecedented joint US-USSR statement. Urgent and specific, the superpowers’ demand was for nothing less than “the resolution of the Palestinian question”. The end result was to be “sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence” for the Palestinians. And to make this happen, Israel was to withdraw from land occupied in the 1967 conflict “as soon as possible”. It was a menacing challenge to Prime Minister Begin’s beliefs. The world’s two most powerful entities were telling him give up biblical Judea and Samaria.
They didn’t know what they were up against. For while this represented a characteristically pragmatic policy from Carter, many Americans read it, like Begin did, as taking a stand against the Bible. Others hated it because Carter partnered with America’s existential enemy, the Soviet Union. Whether as prophecy-believing Christians or stick-in-the-mud flag-wavers, a majority of Americans saw this memorandum as the devil’s handiwork.
Interference?
Here’s where it gets interesting for anyone concerned with foreign meddling in US elections:
Soon after announcing the plan, readers of the New York Times got a jolt. As they thumbed through the world news section, there among other Middle East stories was a full-page statement. It was signed by three recent leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals and numerous luminaries, all comfortable with Begin’s prophetic dialect. “The time has come for evangelical Christians to affirm their belief in biblical prophecy and Israel’s divine right to the land,” scolded the text.
Admonishing the Carter administration specifically, the signatories intimated that the president had lost his way. Carter’s initiative caused “grave apprehension concerning the recent direction of American foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East”. Anxious, Bible-believing Christians were “particularly troubled by the erosion of American governmental support for Israel evident in the joint US-USSR statement.”
A warning.
This advertisement-cum-editorial ran in a number of major papers. It was a sophisticated warning against defying God’s plan. And for those forgetful of exactly what God had in mind, the authors were happy to set the record straight.
First, the reader was instructed to remember above all else that “most evangelicals understand the Jewish homeland to include the territory west of the Jordan River”. In other words, don’t mess with the Judea and Samaria. Next, the authors directly warned the president of consequences. “We would view with grave concern any effort to carve out of the historic Jewish homeland another nation or political entity, particularly one which would be governed by terrorists whose stated goal is the destruction of the Jewish state”.
Alarmingly, New York Times readers first saw a genuine news article on page nine before flipping to this page. It was a perfect set up: “Study Finds Dispute With Israel Would Hurt the Carter Race in 1980.”
Converging interests.
The ad caused many to wonder who was behind it, and if indeed “most evangelicals” were really this upset. Carter was Christian America’s own born-again candidate. Had that changed?
The numbers didn’t lie. Going by the organizations represented by the letter’s signatories, the statistics were staggering. The National Association of Evangelicals was huge (currently representing 45,000 churches). The remainder were a Who’s Who of American conservative theological scholarship.
But this didn’t entirely answer who was behind the campaign. A peek behind the curtain revealed another figure, a media strategist. He was none other than New York-based Jewish activist and writer Gerald Strober.
If this causes you to scratch your head, allow me to set the scene. Strober helped found the Committee of American Jews in Support of Prime Minister Begin. A true believer in Begin’s biblical narrative, Strober recognized at a critical moment who Israel’s natural allies should be. The result was a new political block. It forged together Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, the Evangelical Alliance, Pat Robertson’s millions of TV followers and conservative American Jews. Their overseas and not-so-silent partner was of course the Likud party. The common denominator: a literal belief in biblical prophecy.
Changed forever.
The alliance proved to be wildly successful. Neither the White House nor Congress has since easily defied what came to be called the Israel Lobby. It is one of the most effective American political organizations of the past half century. Indeed, it is arguably more consistently successful than either of the major parties. And yet it stands mainly on a belief that a foreign power fulfills End Time prophecy.
Make no mistake, people directly employed by a foreign political party worked to forge this alliance. Moreover, it was marvelously effective.
Of presidents and Bibles.
So effective, in fact, that by the time Jimmy Carter started his reelection campaign, he was no longer the Christian candidate. There was a perceived credibility gap; Christians discerned a deeper lack of faith in his anemic commitment to prophecy. Didn’t he really believe the Bible?
Evangelicals found his stance on moral and family issues equally wanting. For example, Jerry Falwell described The White House Conference on Families as an attempt to “sanction homosexuality…regulate families, and ensure federal funding for abortion”. The conference was a signature policy-making vehicle for Carter, as was the US-USSR memorandum of understanding on Israel. Evangelicals struggled to understand how a Bible-believing man could back two such unbiblical ideas.
Hidden in plain sight.
Linking the two issues meant that Carter was in trouble. As 1980 approached, Reverend Falwell and his fellow travelers found themselves positioned to swing the election.
Flush with money and an army of followers, they aimed to bring the president down. According to Carter, “Jerry Falwell purchased $10 million in commercials…to brand me as a traitor to the South and no longer a Christian”. Guess who was helping Jerry?
The answer was as plain as day. When the time came to boost Falwell’s national profile, Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson published his biography. Penned in 1979, the wholly uncritical Jerry Falwell: Aflame for God came out just in time for the presidential campaign. Who wrote it? Gerald Strober! How many people noticed that Falwell’s biographer was a Jewish writer working for Israel’s Likud Party?
Not that the Israelis concealed their hand. Begin famously gave Falwell a Learjet for his personal use during the campaign. He also awarded the evangelist the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal at a very-well publicized gala celebration in New York City. The prize was a special one, marking the 100th anniversary of the father of the Irgun. For Falwell to accept the prize was to celebrate the triumph of Jabotinsky’s maximalism as a victory for God. Giving it to an American Christian was to signal the hope that God would triumph in Washington too. Now they just needed to find the right man for the job.
A true believer.
As the 1980 campaign got underway, the End Times block anointed their candidate. Ronald Reagan had already made startlingly clear comments on Israel’s role in the End Time, especially with regard to the Soviet Union. He even publicly echoed televangelist Pat Robertson’s view that the Soviet state was that evil biblical entity called Magog. No other presidential candidate in history had ever said such things.
Reporting from the Republican Party Convention, the Washington Post was taken aback. “The white, right, born-again faithful, once safe in the fold of Jimmy Carter…are flocking to the Republican mother church this year where they feel they have a friend in Ronald Reagan”. Meanwhile, Falwell bragged that his Moral Majority was giving Reagan four million votes that otherwise would not be available to any candidate at all.
Saved, baptized and registered.
These were brand new voters, awakened to action by the need to support Israel and protect America from moral decline. With an estimated 25 million television viewers and 72,000 clergy within its ranks “including Catholics, Mormons and Jews” it was a plausible claim. They’d really done their homework, discovering through meticulous polling that only 55 percent of evangelicals were previously registered to vote. This compared to a national average of 72 percent. Their motto famously became, “Get them saved, baptized and registered”.
“Carter last time got the church vote because he campaigned as a born-again Christian”, the Washington Post quoted Falwell as saying. “But this time people will be more concerned about issues than general characterizations”. All this while kingmaker Falwell flew in an Israeli jet and honed his media skills with Likud support.
Certainly it was a turning point in presidential politics. The overall significance of the 1980 campaign is the subject of numerous books, so I won’t belabor the point. I do wonder, however, given unanimous agreement on the importance of that moment, why we don’t think more about the messianic ideals that played into it.
Don’t be outraged; be prudent.
Here I am not thinking so much about Israel’s involvement. America’s tight association with themes from the Hebrew Bible go back to the first colonists. So be it.
Of more interest is the tipping of the scales toward political unreality that dates from this time. It is a turn to messianic utopianism in both Israel and America that concerns me. And no, I don’t just mean to the Right. I mean the vacillating polarization which jerks from self-righteous Right to pretentious Left, leaving no place for moderation. It has become an age of the fantastic and hyperbolic. All politics is maximalist and salvific. It is madness.
Consider again President Carter. Whatever his reputation as a liberal, Carter’s down-to-earth muzzling of his religious beliefs while commander-in-chief demonstrated the noblest facet of conservatism. Isn’t his prudence, his lack of drama, a fine example of what governance should be? In that mode, the example of George H.W. Bush also comes to mind. Both of these men can be fairly criticized for any number of things, but hubris would not be among them.
Yes, Progressives too.
The election of 1980 and every election since darkens that modest vision. It is understandable. We live in desperate times. We easily accept that the proverbial desperate measures must be applied to fix things.
But even if we need a reset of civilization, it can’t come through a revolution or faux messianic posturing. Civilization itself was a politician’s big promise. Enough of that. No candidate should presume to speak for heaven or for history or even for that mythological god, “the People”. Those are matters for philosophers not governors. Instead, we need a watchmaker’s hand, skilled, steady and free; a master of interconnecting cogs and adept at tuning their balance.
No government or political ideology can save us. If the climate crisis and other problems are to be solved, it will happen through an organic means, at most facilitated by a gentle hand at the helm.
Edmund Burke, British statesman, critic of the French Revolution, friend of Benjamin Franklin and defender of the American colonies, had this to say: “In all changes in the State, moderation is a virtue, not only amiable, but powerful. It is a disposing, arranging, conciliating, cementing virtue. Great powers reside in those who can make great changes. Their own moderation is their only check.”
Practical advice.
If I say in this regard that the Obama and Trump eras manifest an arrogance similar to one another, I will be in trouble. So instead I’ll suggest just thinking about them with Burke’s wisdom as a guiding light. Where were the virtues of prudence and moderation?
And let’s practice it ourselves. Whichever side we favor, let’s at least admit that our team overreaches and makes mistakes, sometimes very grave ones. As civilization proves, we cannot be trusted with god-like powers.
Neither let us claim, like John Knox, that “all our adversaries do is diabolical”. Admit instead that we too turn a deaf ear while shouting in deafening tones. That our hubris infuriates those whom we do not understand. If that simple humility is hard to swallow, know that this means we have lost all our temperance in a fit of irrationality, for messianism keeps the blood at a constant boil. It is time to take it down a notch.
Edmund Burke and the virtue of prudence.
In all changes in the State, moderation is a virtue, not only amiable, but powerful. It is a disposing, arranging, conciliating, cementing virtue….
Great powers reside in those who can make great changes. Their own moderation is their only check.
And if this virtue is not paramount…their acts will taste more of their power than of their wisdom or benevolence. Whatever they do will be in extremes…. Revenge will be smothered and hoarded, and the duration of schemes marked in that temper, will be as precarious as their establishment was odious. Moderation…is the virtue only of superior minds. It requires deep courage….
Burke, Edmund. The works and correspondence of … Edmund Burke. London: F. & J. Rivington. Vol. 1, 564.
A note to young people: In 1980 newspapers were the Internet; The New York Times was Facebook.
Further reading.
An image of the New York Times advertisement.
Article from same edition on Israel liability for Carter.
Washington Post at the Republican Convention: Evangelicals Flock to GOP Standard.
The Black Jesus. Messianism and the Obama Presidency. (An excerpt from my book.)
Sources:
- Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 57.
- United State Department of State, Department of State Bulletin, November 7, 1977, 639.
- Kathy Sawler and Robert G. Kaiser, “Evangelicals Flock to GOP Standard Feeling They Have a Friend in Reagan,” Washington Post, July 16, 1980, A15.
- John Herbers, “Ultraconservative Evangelicals A Surging New Force in Politics,” New York Times, August 17, 1980, A1.
- J. Brooks Flippen, Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2011), 192.
- “Scripture Lesson,” New York Times, October 28, 1981, A21.
- James Mills, “The Serious Implications of a 1971 Conversation with Ronald Reagan,” San Diego Magazine, August 1985, 140–141.
- Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan (Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O, 1984), 1601.
- Unger, Craig. 2012. The fall of the house of Bush: the untold story of how a band of true believers seized the executive branch, started the Iraq War, and still imperils America’s future. New York, NY: Scribner. 109.