Columnist Molly Ivins argues that she has the key to the hearts of religious voters, at least when it comes to the presidential election in 2008: Bill Moyers. Moyers, a former Southern Baptist minister now affiliated with the United Church of Christ, can bring, Ivins thinks, liberal fire and moral clarity to the presidential race.
“Bill Moyers has been grappling with how to fit moral issues to political issues ever since he left Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and went to work for Lyndon Johnson in the teeth of the Vietnam War. Moyers worked for years in television, seriously addressing the most difficult issues of our day. He has studied all different kinds of religions and different approaches to spirituality. He’s no Holy Joe, but he is a serious man. He opens minds–he doesn’t scare people. He includes people in, not out. And he sees through the dark search for a temporary political advantage to the clear ground of the Founders. He listens and he respects others.”
Bill Moyers is indeed a serious man, and he does have experience. He was, remember, a major adviser to President Johnson and on Ross Perot’s shortlist for Vice President in 1992. Still, I wonder how Moyers helps the political left with the religious vote?
This is, after all, a man who very recently on his PBS television program compared the Noahic Flood to the Holocaust and suggested that God repeatedly “messed up” in the Genesis account. He is also the one who sat agog on public television as neo-pagan Joseph Campbell unpacked the key to the meaning of life: follow your bliss.
Molly Ivins ends her column with both a plea for Moyers to run, and an assessment that he could never win. I don’t think Moyers is the next Jimmy Carter. There’s no way he’d run, and little chance he would resonate with evangelicals. But it might be interesting to see a presidential race in which not one but two contenders, Moyers and Republican Mike Huckabee, are former students at Southwestern Seminary.
What about it, Southern Seminary alums? Any of you planning to throw your hat in the ring?
