There’s been considerable discussion this week about whether Barack Obama has, to the media’s satisfaction, rejected/denounced the beliefs of some controversial figures who’ve endorsed his campaign. Most of the talk is a rather classic example of guilt by association, but it seems to be big news anyway.
The Farrakhan squabble seems especially unhelpful, given that Obama doesn’t seem to want the guy to have anything to do with his campaign, but if this is the way the game is going to be played, perhaps John McCain can be pressed for his take on John Hagee’s colorful worldview.
Senator John McCain got support on Wednesday from an important corner of evangelical Texas when the pastor of a San Antonio mega-church, Rev. John C. Hagee, endorsed Mr. McCain for president. Mr. Hagee, who argues that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive, biblically prophesized military strike against Iran that will lead to the second coming of Christ, praised Mr. McCain for his pro-Israel views.
“John McCain has publicly stated his support of the state of Israel, pledging that his administration will not permit Iran to have nuclear weapons to fulfill the evil dreams of President Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel off the map,” Mr. Hagee said at a news conference at the Omni
Hotel in San Antonio.Mr. Hagee also praised Mr. McCain for his “solid, pro-life voting record for the past 24 years.”
Mr. McCain, who has been on a steady search for support among conservative and evangelical leaders who have long distrusted him, said he was “very honored” by Mr. Hagee’s endorsement.
Given that McCain can desperately use a hand with conservative Christian evangelicals, that’s not surprising, but given the political climate, it’s hardly unreasonable to ask McCain to talk about his thoughts on Hagee’s ideas. After all, if Tim Russert can quiz Obama on Farrakhan’s lunacy, or nutty comments from Harry Belafonte, McCain can at least expound a bit on his new friend’s end-times prophecies.
I suspect the typical American hasn’t heard of John Hagee, but in evangelical circles, he’s a very big deal, and the pastor of one of the nation’s more powerful mega-churches. He’s also a leading, if not the leading player in the “Christian-Zionist” movement, a political philosophy “rooted in biblical prophecies and a belief that Israel’s struggles signal a prelude to Armageddon.”
It’s a philosophy ripe for analysis. Hagee, for example, believes the anti-Christ will be the head of the European Union. Does McCain find that reasonable?
Hagee has also been particularly prolific on the subject of the end-times.
When addressing Jewish audiences, Mr. Hagee generally avoids talking about Armageddon. But his books, whose titles include “Beginning of the End” and “From Daniel to Doomsday,” are filled with death and mayhem. “The battlefield will cover the nation of Israel!” he writes in “Jerusalem Countdown,” his recent work, describing a “sea of human blood drained from the veins of those who have followed Satan.”
Last year, at a major gathering of televangelists, Hagee also explained his belief that “democracy in America is being hijacked by activist federal judges,” and that school violence is the result of court rulings that prohibit state-sponsored Ten Commandments displays. Is McCain on board with all of this?
What’s more, Glenn Greenwald found some helpful examples of Hagee denouncing Muslims (“[T]hose who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews”); blaming Hurricane Katrina on Americans’ sins (“I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that”); and urging U.S. foreign policy to help hasten the Rapture.
The GOP has long been given a pass on courting the most warped and twisted religious figures around. George Bush spoke regularly with Pat Robertson — never once forced to “denounce” or “reject” him. In 2006, Rev. Hagee had a private meeting with uber-White House neocon (and convicted criminal) Elliot Abrams, who just happens to run Middle East policy in the Bush administration, and afterwards, Hagee gushed that he and Abrams (like he and Lieberman) shared similar views towards the Middle East: “we felt we were on the right track.”
Watching the media’s treatment of Farrakhan and Hagee, is it possible to imagine a more transparent, and grotesque, double standard?
Nope, not really. The difference seems to be that Hagee (like Robertson, Falwell, Dobson, and others) is a wealthy, white Christian, for whom a certain tolerance is expected.