Scandals with Mirror Images
by Rachel MacNair
A video clip I saw recently offers a point I’ve thought of for a long time. Since it’s Chuck Todd making the point, and he’s a news analyst of long stature, the point has more heft than me just thinking it alone. He says it’s a theory he’s not 100% certain of, but he finds it persuasive. You can find the clip from Holy Post Media: The Scandal That Changed Evangelical Politics Forever.
The scandal was the one that got Bill Clinton impeached, though not removed from office. Todd says it may help explain why evangelicals later embraced Trump. At the time, evangelicals as a whole were keen on the idea that character mattered.
Some feminists at the time, says Todd, were inclined to speak out against Clinton but didn’t do so because they wanted a seat at the table. (Except for us pro-life feminists, of course, but we weren’t getting any such seat.) My recollection entails much more than that: they thought having Clinton was crucial to keeping abortion readily available, and went to great lengths to support him accordingly. And said so, over and over.
But Clinton stayed in office. Todd thinks this made some evangelical leaders more transactional, as opposed to insisting that character mattered. If people looked the other way with Bill Clinton, maybe people will look the other way with Trump, if he can get them what they want. That was the rationale – flip the switch. Todd explicitly cites the overturning of Roe v. Wade as one of the transactions hoped for.
But Did the Clinton Transaction Work?
Suppose the feminists of the Clinton era had followed their own principles about how young women employees should be treated by the powerful and that they were more concerned about having only people of character being in positions of power. Had Clinton not had the support and been removed from office, what would have happened? While much is difficult to predict, this much we know: Vice President Al Gore would have become President.
Gore was one of those Democrats who had been pro-life early on, but had changed by this time. They would have still had their advocate in office.
We can’t predict for certain but can easily guess that, since he would have been the incumbent, and since in reality he came excruciatingly close to winning the next election without being the incumbent, he could well have won instead of Bush in 2020.
The trajectory of history would be entirely different. And the chances are good that Republicans would have remained as skittish about actually doing anything pro-life on abortion as they were then and have been ever since. The pro-abortion position could possibly be stronger now under this alternative scenario.
We don’t know the future from here on out, but we’re living in the future from that time. People who thought they were being pragmatic and realistic for their own position may well not have been in the long run.
Will the Trump Transaction Work Now?
We did get Roe v. Wade overturned. But the context was not helpful to persuasion. Pro-abortion states have doubled down. The technology of chemical abortions is making the actual numbers of abortions go up after they had been declining for years. I collected together a bunch of conservative commentators expounding:
Trump Sabotaging the Pro-Life Movement
There are in this country millions of people who think Trump is despicable but who admire Pope Leo XIV. A transactional approach that includes corruption is going to alienate a lot of people. Many will appreciate people who stand on principle even if they disagree with the principle itself. That makes them more likely to listen.
I’m still delighted that Roe v. Wade was overturned, of course. But I also knew at the time that it was just a step. The headline I put into our e-newsletter, Peace & Life Connections, was “Major Obstacle Removed.” And it’s a huge relief to have that obstacle removed.
The obstacle of transactional politicians who mainly give lip service to pro-life principles, who don’t take action even just on abortion, much less other life issues, and who taint it all with their own intense corruption and cruel policies – they’re another major obstacle that we have yet to remove.
Removing them at the ballot box would be ideal, but short of that and in the meantime, we need to show cruelty and hypocrisy and violating principles for the intense damage they are. They damage both directly and by hurting the social movements who don’t merely give lip service but really mean it.
Playing political games is something both camps can do. Which one is up and which one is down will vary across time. Only standing on principle remains constant.
Rachel MacNair standing on principle at a Quaker gathering.
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Because consistent-life candidates are few and mainly for lower offices, our electoral work focuses on referendums, where how to vote is more clear-cut. See our project website:
Peace and Life Referendums: Voting against Violence
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