Gotta love Glenn’s comment [1]about Pat Robertson and Rudy Giuliani, today.
“Evangelical Christian leader Pat Robertson on Wednesday endorsed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.” Well, it’s only fair — Hillary has to deal with the Mondale endorsement . . . .
I spoke on this, earlier today [2].
Thing is, it’s the combination of that post, and Reynolds’ comment, that gets me to thinking.
Personally, I don’t know as Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani is as damaging as Mondale would be to Hillary, or that of Stormfront, to Ron Paul. Still, there are some negatives involved, even amongst dedicated Christian social conservatives, where Rudy is concerned.
Ultimately, I guess the question needs to be asked, what is the value of such endorsements, on a broad scale? I don’t suppose I never thought of that question before, but it occurs to me that that breaks down to two different questions simultaneously;
- What is the value of such an endorsement to the person being endorsed
- What is the value of such an endorsement to the person doing the endorsing?
It seems to me that the two questions are totally attached to each other.
Let’s take the second question, first, and apply it to the subjects at hand.
As I think I suggested earlier today, Robertson is endorsing Giuliani because Giuliani happens to be in the lead at the moment. There is an intrinsic value to having picked a winner. While Mr. Giuliani holds a significant lead at the moment, it is far from a done deal, however. Ultimately, though, that doesn’t matter in the short term. In the short term, being seen with the frontrunner, or at least being seen siding with the frontrunner, is a feather in your own popularity cap, if you’re into such things. I have long since decided that Robertson is one of these. A publicity hound of the first order.
Let’s be fair about that statement; Certainly, one doesn’t spend fifteen years in radio, as I did, and then spend another several years posting opinions on a website, without a certain amount of ego in the mixture. There’s no denying this. But every action I’ve ever seen Mr. Robertson take, including his presidential run, seemed to me at the time and since, to be calculated to increase the popularity of Pat Robertson. Beyond that, his purposes are murky at best, if not nonexistent. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I am so uncomfortable with the man, as a rule. He seems to me someone who is simply trying to maintain his relevancy in a world that has essentially gone by him, two decades gone, now. And, failing.
As to the value of Robertson’s endorsement to Giuliani, that, too, is short term at best, and in truth probably not worth much at all. Most dedicated Christians don’t want thing one thing to do with Pat Robertson, for the reasons that I’ve mentioned above. I’m hardly alone in that. The stated reason for wanting that endorsement, is to swing evangelicals his way. Yet, how much influence does Mr. Robertson actually have with them? In the end, not much, really. So, while Mr. Giuliani gets to spend a lot of time in front of the press with, supposedly, the issue of the trust of evangelicals well behind him, the truth is he hasn’t really gained their trust, at all. Once the noise dies down from the endorsement, ultimately he is left only marginally stronger, even amongst the evangelicals that this little exercise was supposed to be about.
By the same token, and, perhaps just as sharply, we might take a moment to examine the Mondale endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Here again, we have someone who has seen his better days go by him, and upon having a microphone shoved in his face (an instant opportunity for a relevancy recharge if there ever was one) he takes the full opportunity, to, once again, endorse the leader in his respective party. Many of the same issues that apply to Pat Robertson, also applied to Walter Mondale, as of when he made the statement…. Including that of being the high priest of his particular religion; that being what Anne Coulter dubbed “the church of liberalism”. The vast majority of the American people, when given a choice, rejected his politics a long time ago. The high point in his political life was a record setting landslide of a drubbing in a hopeless pursuit of the highest office in the land. The man was to wacky even for the Democrats, who mostly voted against him. In other words, even at his high point in life, he was completely irrelevant to America.
So too, for that matter, Geraldine Ferraro, who manages by some miricle, to keep getting dredged up for comment by our supposedly unbiased press.
I will leave it to the reader to sort out the implications of all of this. I merely point out the associational linkages as I see them.
I’d go ahead and address Ron Paul and his Stormfront endorsement, if I thought he had a brain in his head. The ability of coherent thought on both their parts seems limited to me, and therefore judging motivations for the both of them is not an impossible… just damned near it. And in the end, useless, since the man won’t even be showing up to the White House on the tour line any time soon, much less as president. Thank God for small favors.