[Full Disclosure: While I am not a practicing Catholic, I still consider myself to be a member of the Church. Growing up I attended 16 years of Catholic School, including St. John's University in NYC. --Tony Palmeri]
Given that he's running for the presidency in the middle of a global pandemic, depressed economy, and the most widespread racial justice protests since 1968, it's not surprising that Joe Biden's religious background has received limited media attention. Yet if he does prevail in November, Mr. Biden would be only the second Catholic ever to occupy the White House. The first of course was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Biden takes his faith seriously, and in 2005 said, "The next Republican that tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to shove my rosary down their throat."
Back in the day, anti-Catholic bigotry made it virtually impossible for Catholic candidates to capture the presidency. New York Governor Al Smith, Democratic party nominee for president in 1928, could not overcome hysterical reactions to his Catholicism in some parts of the country; in the deep south the Ku Klux Klan campaigned actively for Republican Herbert Hoover. Political historian Allan Lichtman concluded that “the religious issue was by far the most important influence on voting.” (cited in Jay Dolan, "The Right of a Catholic to Be President," Notre Dame Magazine, 2008).
Above: Sample Ku Klux Klan rhetoric used against Al Smith in 1928. Klansmen argued that if a Catholic were elected President, he would take orders from the Pope. Such sentiments had widespread support in the United States for many years.
During the 1960 campaign, with anti-Catholicism still salient for a significant block of voters (especially southern evangelical Protestant Democrats), JFK took the issue on directly in a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. His emphatic endorsement of the principle of church and state separation became a prototype for how to handle accusations that if elected the politician would place allegiance to religious principles or leaders above allegiance to the Constitution. JFK said:
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act . . . where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source . . . I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.
I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.
Given that today 163 Catholics hold seats in the United States Congress and 5 sit on the United States Supreme Court (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh), it's safe to say that anti-Catholicism by itself is no longer sufficient to block upward mobility for public servants. When a headline seeking St. Louis Archbishop announced in 2004 that he would not serve communion to pro-choice Catholic Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, it was the Church itself--by then in a well-deserved crisis of legitimacy after decades of shameful child abuse cover-ups and other corruption--that looked foolish and hypocritical.
But even though Biden's Catholicism will probably not be THE factor that determines his electoral fate in November, it does behoove his campaign to define his relationship to the religion before the Republicans define it FOR him. There are 51 million Catholic adults in the US, almost evenly divided between those leaning Democratic and Republican. Conservatives view Catholics as the "ultimate swing constituency" and have launched a "Catholics For Trump" coalition. No doubt GOP operatives salivate at the thought of pegging Joe Biden as just another pro-abortion liberal who's out of touch with the Church's patriarchal and puritanical teachings on social issues.
In my view, the connection of religion to public policy should not be something that Democrats minimize, get defensive about, or concede to the GOP. For too long, establishment Democrats and more authentic progressives working outside the Party have allowed the Republican view of religion to dominate in the public sphere. As a result, too many Americans see religion as connecting with public policy only when we are dealing with marriage rights, abortion, and other culture war issues. We forget that the historical movements for slavery abolition, civil rights, and peace were led almost exclusively by deeply religious activists. Even the movement for prohibition, led by organizations like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, turns out to have been not about anti-alcohol prudery, but about reigning in the ability of a corrupt industry to profit through promoting the addiction of working people to booze. (See political scientist Mark Schrad's brilliant rethinking of the Temperance Movement for a sobering look at the historic battle between activists and alcohol hustlers.).
Uniting Factions: The Pope-A-Dope Strategy
So how can Joe Biden be more proactive on the religious issue? Can his Catholicism become something that actually unifies the factions he needs to defeat his Hydroxychloroquine hawking opponent? I think it can, if Biden and his campaign follow what I call the pope-a-dope strategy for Catholic candidates. The strategy includes two parts: (1) style and tone, and (2) progressive economic policy. The first part appears to come easily to Biden, while the second will require some adjustments in positions the campaign has taken--especially on core economic issues. Let's talk about each part.
Part I: Style and Tone
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the younger Joe Biden struck me as little more than the typical Washington hack politician; he talked much about governing for the middle-class, but always found ways to privilege the interests of big corporations and the military-industrial-complex. His disastrous and short lived presidential campaign of 1988, in which he was discovered to have plagiarized material both in law school and in his political career, had a kind of crass ineptitude to it that pretty much became the Biden brand. From his bumbling facilitation of Anita Hill's testimony during the Senate confirmation hearings of Judge Robert Bork, to his championing of the 1994 Crime Bill that led to mass incarceration, to his support for bankruptcy law so favorable to big banks that it provoked Elizabeth Warren to get into politics, to his enabling of the Bush Administration's WMD lies in the run up to the Iraq War, Joe Biden was hardly what you'd call the conscience of the Democratic Party.
Mr. Biden will never escape that record, a record that makes it nearly impossible for key blocks of voters--especially the Bernie Sanders Democrats and progressive leaning Independents--to see him as anything more than the lesser evil candidate. Most Berniecrats will vote for Biden, but they won't be happy about it and their activism on his behalf will be minimal.
Having said that, we all know a politician's prior record is not necessarily what builds or maintains a base of voters. If it was, we would see a hell of a lot more incumbents booted out of office. Style and tone count at least as much as prior record and current policy proposals, and probably more.
For most of his public life, stylistically Biden performed a scrappy, working class, "average Joe" kind of persona. He was chosen for the VP slot in 2008 in part because Barack Obama thought the Biden persona acted as a liaison to the white working class. For me Biden's never been fully credible when enacting the working class role, and in fact most of his gaffes occur when he's anchored in that role. Telling an African-American radio host that "if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black" is the most recent example.
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| As VP, Joe Biden often provided comic relief for the Obama Administration. At the top of the ticket, his gaffes will receive more scrutiny. The pope-a-dope strategy says he should rebrand himself as a more serious pontificator. |
This year something's different. Perhaps because he's trying to establish as sharp a contrast as possible with the hedonistic, narcissistic Trump--or perhaps merely as a result of age--Biden sometimes takes on a kind of papal style that's in stark contrast to his usual average Joe. In the papal style, which is most effective in Biden's scripted speeches and ads, he waxes on about "the character of the nation" being on the ballot, and how we need a comeback for our national "soul." At a time when thousands of Americans are dying from a mysterious virus, tens of millions are suddenly unemployed, and social unrest is exploding in the streets, the papal style sets a comfort providing tone. "Pope Joseph I" can at least feel our pain, which is something Mr. Trump is clearly not capable of doing.
The papal style by itself cannot transform the Berniecrats or independent progressives into fired up Biden voters. On the other hand, those factions appreciate politics carried out with a sense or moral urgency. While a papal style and tone may not grow Biden's progressive support, neither will it shrink it, AND the style might connect with voters over 65 from all over the political spectrum who see this election as being about restoring an atmosphere of "decency" to Washington. Who better to preach decency than a pope?
Below are two Biden messages that represent the papal style. In the first, notice the mood of healing and reconciliation. In the second, notice the empathetic quality. In a debate with Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden will be tempted to resort to the scrappy working class style. That's risky because remember the working class style is Biden's gaffe mode. My suggestion would be go full pope-a-dope: contrast the incumbent's cynical BS and bluster with uplifting messages of hope and empathy.
Part II: Pope-A-Dope Economic Policy
Now for the difficult part. News reports indicate that Biden wants to "move left" in an effort to unify the Democratic Party going into November. Unfortunately, the alleged moves to the left (e.g. lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60 and expanding student debt forgiveness) not only aren't sufficient to spark enthusiasm among the Berniecrats, but they're also wholly inadequate to the grave crises the country is facing.
As an open centrist beholden to corporate power for all of his political career, it's understandable that Biden cannot or will not endorse a democratic Socialist platform. On the other hand, the bland middle-of-the-road, don't rock the boat, "nothing would fundamentally change" (as he told his rich donors) business as usual that--combined with name recognition and the retreat of the other centrist candidates before Super Tuesday--got him through the primaries just won't be enough in a general election taking place during an economic collapse probably more severe than the Great Depression.
So if current conditions require Biden to move away from centrist crony capitalism, and democratic Socialism isn't an option, where does he turn? Well, good Catholic boys should always turn to Catholic social teaching, which since the 1890s has been known for stinging critiques of capital while maintaining comfortable distance from overt socialism.
In 1891, during a turbulent time of often violent resistance to capitalist class exploitation of workers, Pope Leo XIII released the encyclical Rerum novarum ("Of Revolutionary Change" or "Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor"). A foundational text in Catholic social teaching, Rerum novarum solidified Leo XIII's standing as "the workers' pope" because of its clear social justice orientation, especially in calling for fair wages, the right to form unions, and the moral imperative of respecting the dignity and worth of the person in the workplace. How important is that latter point as we now have a president willing to invoke war-time powers to force meat packers back to work without sufficient protection against the coronavirus? Mr. Biden would do well to remind the voters that not only his own, but ALL major religious traditions reject the exploitation of the working masses to benefit the privileged few.
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| Pope Leo XIII |
Rerum novarum also sparked what in Catholic theology became known as the "preferential option for the poor," a principle that found its way into 20th century European social welfare programs and can even be linked to FDR's New Deal, JFK's New Frontier, and LBJ's Great Society. As stated by Leo XIII:
The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be especially cared for and protected by the government.
The United States government has spent the better part of the last 40 years moving away from that principle, the consequences of which have now become painfully clear as the pandemic brutally exposes the inability of the government to protect the most vulnerable.
In 1981 on the 90th anniversary of Rerum novarum, Pope John Paul II released an updated version called Laborem Exercens ("Through Work"). In it he laid out two principles that ought to be accepted by every American politician regardless of party or religious affiliation:
1. Labor takes precedence over capital.
2. People are more important than things.
If you think about it, the failure of our political system to form policies based on those two simple yet powerful principles is probably at the root of every major problem we face. If and when he is asked about how his Catholicism informs his politics, Pope Joseph I would be a doing himself and the country a great service if he would simply say, "my religion teaches that labor takes precedence over capital, and people are more important than things. I intend to govern from that foundation." Just saying that much--and hopefully saying it sincerely--would make it so much easier for progressive factions to do more than just grudgingly vote for him.
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| In April of 1980, Joe Biden (right) and Jill Biden met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican |
The structures of sin today include repeated tax cuts for wealthier people, justified many times in the name of investment and development; tax havens for private and corporate earnings; and of course the possibility of corruption by some of the world's largest companies, not infrequently in tune with the governing political sector.
Every year one hundred thousand million dollars, which should be paid in taxes to finance medical care and education, accumulate in tax havens accounts, thus preventing the possibility of the worthy and sustained development of all social actors.
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| Joe Biden met with Pope Francis at the Vatican in April of 2016 |
More recently, and in response to the pandemic, Francis has suggested that this may be the right time to enact a "universal basic wage." That was of course Andrew Yang's signature issue during the pre-pandemic Democratic Party primaries. It's a bold idea, one that Pope Joseph I should give serious consideration to endorsing as it is now clear that drastic action is necessary to get us through this modern depression.
Conclusion: Enacting the Pope-A-Dope Strategy
Just to be clear, I am NOT arguing that Joe Biden should remake his campaign as a vessel for the Vatican's economic viewpoints. Rather, when asked about his Catholicism he should avoid the tendency of Democratic candidates to repeat back rote arguments about the separation of Church and state. All that does is cede the religious ground to the Republicans and place the Democrat on the defensive over how the Democratic Party platform conflicts with Church teachings on social issues.
The pope-a-dope strategy requires Biden to remind voters that the moral dimension of politics extends into decisions we make about the economy, health care, the environment, education, and everything else impacting the population at-large. When living through a time of pandemic, economic distress, and social unrest, the LAST thing we need right now is a Democratic candidate who sees human misery as a technical problem for which there are bureaucratic solutions.
Equally important, Biden needs to adopt an economic program that shows he's willing to walk the walk on the morality talk. The pope-a-dope strategy takes the progressive economic program found in Catholic social teaching--a program rooted in honoring the dignity and worth of working people--and turns it into a secular platform without even having to mention the Catholic influence. Such a program would put Biden squarely on the side of popular ideas like raising the minimum wage to a living wage, guaranteeing health care for all, and restructuring tax policy so that it favors the 99 over the 1 percent. By forcefully pontificating (pun intended) on such policies, Biden will establish a clear contrast against Mr. Trump's focus on corporate profits, the Dow Index, and forcing many to return to unsafe work environments.
Finally, the pope-a-dope strategy would help Mr. Biden achieve the unity he claims to be looking for heading into November. Progressive Democrats and Independents working outside the party look favorably on a politics of moral urgency that pushes passionately for the common good. No doubt the big money that wields great influence on the Democratic Party (as it does the Republicans) would prefer that Biden just ignore or humor the Bernie wing while the party hacks continue to insult them. The test for Biden is whether he has the courage to stand up to those interests. The pope-a-dope strategy gives him a way to take on those interests while unifying the grassroots factions.
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