Focus On The Ego

Back in May, James Dobson declared in an op-ed entitled Rudy's not the one, "I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision."

Ostensibly, Dobson made this "irrevocable decision" because of Rudy's stance on abortion, but I'm not buying it. I don't doubt that Rudy's pro-choice position rankles Dobson, but Dobson has proven himself plenty flexible in the past on matters of principle when it comes to making a smart political bet. No, I want to suggest that there's another, more important reason why Dobson cannot abide the possibility of a Rudy presidency.

In a nutshell, Dobson looks at a Rudy presidency and quite rightly sees the loss of the thing he cares most about—and it ain't his immortal soul. It's his access to power.

Rudy treats social conservative leaders even worse than he treated New York City borough presidents during his tenure as mayor: He won't even deign to be in the same room with them, much less kiss Dobson's ring in public. And this is how Rudy treats Dobson and Co. when he's in campaign mode. Imagine the kind of treatment that Dobson and Co. will get if this uppity, thrice-married, lapsed papist actually becomes president. If candidate Rudy won't even meet with them now, president Rudy certainly won't have his aids inviting them to the kinds of closed-door meetings at the White House that they thrive on.

Dobson's status as a boss within the evangelical community is dependent on his ability to credibly present himself—to his constituents and to outsiders—as a prominent Christian voice in the halls of power. If Dobson and his pals can't go back to their respective constituencies and present themselves as men who have the ear of the secular powers that be, then why should anyone respond to their fundraising appeals, or subscribe to their magazines, or generally back them as God's representatives to D.C.? What conservative voter is going to pull out their checkbook when Dobson comes on the TV and asks for a million bucks to help fight sodomy, if it's public knowledge that this man is persona non grata in the corridors of power?

Similarly, if it becomes abundantly clear over the course of one presidential campaign that Dobson can't actually deliver evangelical votes on Election Day, then nobody in D.C. will give him the public photo ops and private meetings that he needs in order to keep the myth of Dobson the Christian Big-Wig alive. This is why Dobson can't afford to back a GOP primary candidate who'll get crushed by Guiliani. (More on that in a moment, though.)

It would be much better for Dobson to see Hillary win the presidency than to have Rudy win and then spend this tenure as president publicly ignoring him and other social conservative leaders. This is why Dobson would rather torpedo the GOP's chances by either telling his constituents to stay home or by going all-out to back a third-party nominee than see Rudy ascend to the throne. It has little to do with the unborn, and everything to do with being publicly locked out of the secret GOP clubhouse like some black or Latino leader.

Dobson's overwhelming need to present himself to his people and to the world as a man with access to power hems him in in all sorts of ways. Not only does it rule out Rudy in the general election, but it also rules out the likes of former governor Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo in the primaries.

In spite of the fact that Huckabee, Tancredo and Sen. Sam Brownback look on paper like the perfect candidates for social conservatives, Dobson can't bless any of these guys in the GOP primary because they're polling in the single digits. Dobson is just lying (what else is new) when he claims in his new New York Times op-ed that he finds "problematic" the approach of "[choosing] a candidate according to the likelihood of electoral success or failure." Dobson knows full well that nothing screams to the world "I'm a big zero with no political clout" like publicly putting all your weight behind a candidate and then seeing them shut out at the polls.

So Dobson has to stay largely out of the primary battle, because he can't back the GOP front-runner and likely winner. And he just can't afford to go all out to back a loser in the primaries, or else he'll lose his status as a GOP boss. Incidentally, you might think that this situation would push Dobson to gamble on Romney, but Romney, alas, is a Mormon, and that poses its own set of problems that are off-topic in this post.

In the end, what Dobson really wants in a presidential candidate is a nice, safe sinner who's a front-runner and who'll publicly kiss the ring. (This was supposed to be McCain this year, before he imploded.) Nothing marks a man as a true prophet like having even a sinner recognize that "truly, this is a son of God," and Dobson covets that acknowledgment from the front-runner. If only Rudy would give him that, but he won't. And Rudy's campaign has to be looking at the way he polls with evangelicals and telling them that he doesn't have to.

Thus Dobson is sidelined entirely in the primary game, and in the likely event of a Rudy candidacy he'll be left with one of two risky options that may still leave him looking like a washed-up has-been if the base doesn't go along: either command the flock to stay home (they may defy him and turn out anyway to vote against Hillary), or grope desperately for a third-party alternative who can poll high enough with evangelicals to get him through this election with his clout intact. Either way, Dobson needs Rudy to lose so that he can (a) make the point that he's not a man to be ignored and (b) crank up the fundraising machine in 2009 and reap the financial blessings that a Hillary presidency will no doubt bring to self-styled "pro-family" groups like his.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future