By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Marco Rubio’s rise in the polls and unexpectedly strong showing in the Iowa caucuses is being attributed by most commentators to his performance in the Republican debate the previous week. Frank Luntz’s questioning of a panel of Iowa Republicans on Fox News immediately after the debate revealed a dramatic change of opinion about Rubio based on what they saw.
There is something else that is being pointed to, however: a YouTube video that circulated in the weeks before the caucuses, one that featured Rubio engaged in an earnest discussion with a young atheist at one of his campaign rallies. It is said to have made a big impression on Iowa voters, especially Iowa’s evangelicals. I know it impressed me.
I still think that Rubio’s youthful appearance will be a drawback if he runs against Hillary. They say that John Kennedy’s youthful looks did not hurt him back in 1960. But that was different. Kennedy was young, but he was a veteran of World War II and sophisticated in appearance. He looked like the man in the old Arrow collar ads. In contrast, Rubio still comes across as, well, boyish. I suspect that even his most ardent backers harbor the thought that it may not be the time for him to make a run for the presidency; that he needs some wrinkles and a few streaks of gray hair to complete the sale with the voters. Time will tell.
But if there is anything that can dispel that apprehension, it would be this video. Rubio was not reciting canned lines, as he seems to do quite often in his interviews and campaign appearances. He was speaking off-the-cuff in response to the atheist’s question, searching for his words at times, which made him seem all the more thoughtful and authentic. He came across as bright, sincere, well-informed — and mature. He addressed an issue that leaves many conservative politicians looking for a way to change the topic: the role of Christianity in a public leader’s life. Rubio didn’t dodge the question; he nailed it.
The atheist began the discussion by observing that “millions of atheists” like himself are looking for a candidate “who will uphold freedom of religion” and “protect our rights,” and that he questions whether Rubio’s strong stress on his Christianity will permit him to do that, contending that Rubio gives the impression that he is “running for pastor-in-chief, not commander-in-chief.”
Rubio didn’t bat an eye. He responded that he has no intention of “forcing Christianity on you,” because “Christians believe that salvation is a free gift that must be willfully accepted. You are entitled to believe whatever you want, or not to believe at all. No one is going to force you to believe in God.” He then added, “But no one is going to force me to stop talking about God”; that “I am entitled to share my faith, especially when I am asked,” because “my faith influences who I am, in every aspect of my life.”
Rubio went on to point out that “you don’t know America if you don’t understand the role of Judeo-Christian belief in its founding,” that, indeed, the Declaration of Independence asserts specifically “that our rights are from our Creator. If there is no Creator, where did your rights come from? We are going to protect the rights of Americans to believe that.”
Rubio then advanced a line of reasoning that is seldom articulated by mainstream politicians. He said to the atheist that he “shouldn’t be worried that my faith informs my decisions,” but should, in fact, “hope that my faith informs me. My faith tells me that I have an obligation to care for the less fortunate, to help my neighbor, to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked. It teaches me that I serve Jesus by serving others. These beliefs have made America a greater country.”
An impressive performance. I recommend that you experience it yourself. Go to YouTube.com and search with the keywords “Rubio and the atheist.” You will get the full video, which runs about five minutes. The only thing missing is a shot or two of the atheist’s face. I doubt he was won over to Christianity by Rubio, but he sounded like an earnest young man who might have been impressed by what he heard.
I hesitate to mention something else that Rubio could have said, fearing that it will make me sound like one of those know-it-alls who nitpick and second-guess to make themselves sound impressive. I am not being critical of Rubio, who was speaking at a rally, extemporaneously. He didn’t have time to search the Internet (the way I did) to get the quotations that I am about to offer for your consideration, quotations that underscore Rubio’s point about the role that religious belief plays in a free society.
With that disclaimer on the record, I wish that Rubio had called to the young atheist’s attention John Adams’ reminder at the time of the Constitutional Convention:
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge…would break through the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
He could have added Edmund Burke’s warning: “Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
And then thrown a dollop of John Courtney Murray into the stew: “Part of the inner architecture of the American ideal of freedom has been the profound conviction that only a virtuous people can be free. It is not an American belief that free government is inevitable, only that it is possible” when “the people as a whole are inwardly governed by the moral law.”
Relying upon Christian beliefs to shape public policy is as American as apple pie.
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