Editor's Note: After this report was published the McCain campaign clarified its position about a meeting with Dr. Billy Graham. Read the clarification — Click Here Now.
In another disturbing sign that Sen. John McCain has little interest in reaching out to his conservative base, including evangelical Christian voters, his campaign has declined an offer to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham.
For almost six decades, Graham has been America’s most influential preacher and evangelist, a man sought out by every president since Harry Truman.
Today, the 89-year-old Graham is in declining health and stays near his home in Montreat, N.C. His last public appearance, in May 2007, marked the dedication of his library. Three former American presidents -- Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- were on hand to honor Graham.
In recent weeks I have been involved with Brian Jacobs, a Fort Worth, Texas, minister and consultant to the Billy Graham Association, to broker a meeting between McCain and Graham. In May, we contacted the McCain campaign with an offer to arrange such a meeting, as we had done between candidate George W. Bush and Graham during the 2000 election.
While meetings with ministers have caused their fair share of controversy in this election cycle, we thought it was worth a try to bring McCain together with America’s most celebrated preacher.
McCain’s campaign responded to Jacobs with the following letter dated June 3, 2008:
Dear Mr. Jacobs,
Thank you for your kind letter offering to set up a personal meeting between Senator McCain and Dr. Billy Graham.
Senator McCain appreciates your invitation and the valuable opportunity it represents. [italics added by McCain campaign]
Unfortunately, I must pass along our regrets and do not foresee an opportunity to add this event to the calendar.
I know you will understand that with the tremendous demands on his time and the large volume of similar requests, events such as this are extremely difficult to schedule even though each one is important. However, we will keep your event in mind should an opportunity present itself in the future.
I know that the Senator would want me to thank you for your interest and to send his very best wishes.
Sincerely,
Amber Johnson
Director of Scheduling
John McCain 2008
See the actual letter from the McCain campaign Click Here Now
The rejection of an offer to meet with Graham is yet another indication that the McCain campaign has made a deliberate, strategic decision to chart a new course for the GOP, a course without the sizeable evangelical Christian voting bloc serving as its base.
The new course is likely designed to pick up disaffected Democrats, even Sen. Hillary Clinton’s women supporters, who are pro-choice.
The danger for McCain is in his campaign’s failure to grasp the size of the born again vote. Latest surveys show that fully 42 percent of all Americans claim to be “born again.”
But the risk is not just that the Republican nominee will lose evangelical voters but that he will lose its massive infrastructure: megachurches with their schools, television programs and massive mailing lists which traditionally play a crucial role for Republicans in voter registration and voter turnout. The cost to the party of replicating this role themselves would be incalculable.
McCain’s new course is a stunning turnabout for the GOP. In the summer of 1980, Ronald Reagan reached out to evangelicals gathered at the Religious Roundtable in a Dallas, Texas, saying to his audience of 10,000, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you.” It marked the beginning of a GOP relationship with evangelicals that became a winning coalition for three presidents.
From 1985 through 1990, I was intimately involved with GOP’s outreach to evangelicals, serving as a “religious liaison” for George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign and answering to his son, my boss, George W. Bush. I later worked in the George H.W. Bush White House dealing with coalitions, including religious groups. From 1998-2000 I was once again in the mix, this time as an informal advisor to George W. Bush.
During the summer months of 2000, when it looked as if the election was going to be close, I began communicating with Jacobs, an evangelical organizer who also worked as a consultant for the Graham organization.
It so happened that Graham would be holding one of his last evangelistic crusades in Jacksonville, Fla., during the last week of the campaign.
The story and our involvement in the Bush-Graham meeting is recounted in the best-selling book "The Preacher and the Politicians" by Time magazine veterans Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs.
As history now records, the day before the 2000 election, the candidate, George W. Bush, flew down from Ohio, met publicly with Graham during his Jacksonville crusade at a press conference, and won the state of Florida by 600 votes the next day.
McCain and the Evangelicals
When Jacobs called me earlier this year to suggest that we try to arrange a similar meeting between Graham and McCain, I was skeptical. During the 2000 primary race, McCain called evangelicals “agents of intolerance.”
Though McCain actually is quite engaging with religious believers -- I have been with him a couple of times at religious events and once interviewed him for a television show that aired on a religious network -- his staff is notoriously hostile. McCain adviser, Charlie Black, and campaign manager, Rick Davis, have a long, troubled history with the evangelical wing of the party.
The pair were said to be behind McCain’s decision to throw televangelist John Hagee “under the bus” after audio recordings suggested Hagee believed Adolf Hitler was an agent of God. Though Hagee’s views of “predestination” are mainstream among many Christian denominations and Hagee obviously never suggested support for Hitler or Nazis, McCain called Hagee “crazy.” Only weeks before he denounced Hagee, McCain had publicly trumpeted the pastor’s endorsement.
Indeed, Hagee has been one of the greatest supporters of Israel and Jewish causes in the evangelical community.
McCain’s hasty decision to discard Hagee was seen by many evangelicals, even those who are not fans of Hagee, as a betrayal.
Although it was done in the context of Sen. Barack Obama’s Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, it was a moment that seemed to pander to the media’s ignorance and hostility toward religion in general. Many evangelicals saw it as grossly unfair.
Even McCain’s friend, Jewish independent Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman said he would still speak at a Hagee gathering. Ed Koch, the former New York mayor and leading Jewish Democrat, scolded McCain for the decision.
“It has become fashionable among liberals, including Jews, to ridicule and denounce Hagee and other fundamentalists,” Koch wrote in a Newsmax.com column. “I do not. I appreciate their support of the state of Israel.”
But Hagee and Graham are not the only evangelical leaders to be rebuffed by McCain. Press reports indicate McCain has turned away olive branch invitations from the influential Dr. James Dobson for the senator to visit him at his headquarters in Colorado Springs.
The theory behind the McCain campaign’s strategy to ignore evangelicals is that they have nowhere else to go, that Obama is too liberal, and they’ll vote against him come November.
But McCain’s team is missing the fact that the vacuum created by the GOP’s divorce from them is being filled by the Democrats.
Both Clinton and Obama have been quietly courting evangelicals, the former in private meetings last year and the later with open, religious language.
Aside from Carter’s winning outreach to born again voters in 1976, this is a new phenomenon among Democrat candidates. New polling shows younger evangelicals have different views about the poor, the environment and societal attitudes toward gays. Public relations expert and evangelical leader Mark DeMoss suggests that Obama could win fully 40 percent of the evangelical vote this November. By my calculations that figure is low.
McCain’s decision not to meet with Graham will likely provoke outrage. And the campaign will likely back down. Graham is no Hagee or Dobson. They will say it was all a mistake and blame it on staff or a “misunderstanding.” But in the process they have revealed their mind-set. Their decision to ignore the leaders of America’s 80 million born-again voters represents a stunning, high wire act for a Republican presidential candidate.
By repudiating evangelical Christians he scrambles the traditional loyalties. It may win him some pro-choice women voters, demoralized by Clinton’s loss to Obama.
And it may win him a few months more of favorable media attention.
But marginalizing a voting bloc that represents 42 percent of the nation is more likely a desperate decision, revealing a campaign that is unsure of itself, fears defeat and has decided to roll the dice.
Doug Wead is a presidential historian and New York Times bestselling author of “All the Presidents’ Children.” He served as special assistant to the President in Bush, Sr. White House and was an informal advisor to George W. Bush leading up to his election in 2000.
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