CNN’s Tucker Carlson, no starry-eyed idealist he, once wrote
that a speech he heard Alan Keyes give while seeking the GOP’s
nomination for President in 2000 was the best speech of the
election campaign. In the very next sentence Carlson corrected
himself to note that by definition, every speech Alan Keyes gave
that year was the best speech of the Presidential campaign.
I’ll never forget the night in Jacksonville, Florida, when my
wife and I listened to Focus on the Family with James
Dobson on the radio of my high mileage Honda Accord. Dobson
excitedly announced he was going to play a tape of an impromptu
speech given by Alan Keyes at a gathering of Republican
presidential candidates. His tone caught our attention. During the
half hour that followed, we heard Alan Keyes speak for the first
time. His performance was electric, leaving me stunned by his
talent and leading my wife to express an interest in politics for
the first time, well, ever. Although I had an entry level job and
my wife was in medical school leveraged to the hilt with student
loans, we sent the 1996 Keyes campaign a check for $50 a few days
later.
During the primary race that followed, I remember watching Ralph
Reed give an interview to a reporter from CNN. When asked who he
thought should capture the nomination, Reed gave the nod to Bob
Dole. I reeled in my seat on our broken down futon. If the head of
the Christian Coalition could bypass Keyes’ obvious oratorical
gifts and prophetic moral conviction for an unexciting
parliamentarian, I concluded the organization had misplaced
priorities. Dole lost to Clinton and went on to make big bucks
pitching Viagra more effectively than he ever pitched himself or
his message to the American people. Despite making hardly a ripple
at the polls, Keyes became the most sought after pro-life speaker
in the nation.
Years have passed and I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot more
of Alan Keyes. He spoke at a Salvation Army Church one night in
Atlanta without notes for nearly an hour and left our group
standing and shouting for more. When he engaged in debates with
George W. Bush and John McCain, it was not difficult to conclude
Keyes was the most well-spoken and quickest-thinking of the
group.
Of course, Keyes’ gifts as a speaker and thinker have never
really been in question. The dig has always been that he couldn’t
win, that he wasn’t the mainstream choice. That criticism seems to
be true thus far in presidential campaigns, but where’s the sense
of fun? Friends in “the movement” and I have often happily
anticipated the prospect of Alan Keyes shredding Al Gore or any
other Democrat to be named in open debate. Though we all know he
could potentially lose a presidential race by Goldwateresque
margins, we also agree there could be no happier way to go down in
flames. If you want to see Democrats answer for abortion, just send
Dr. Keyes to the podium.
Before assuming that Keyes will run this year just to prove a
point, one must consider that in the Illinois Senate race, we have
a very different situation than in 1996 or 2000. Keyes isn’t
running for the top job in American politics, just to be one voice
out of a hundred in the Senate. What Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, or
Barbara Boxer have been for the left, Keyes could be for the right.
Now that the Illinois GOP is left without any good options in its
homegrown crop, Keyes is a natural choice. Here, for the first time
since he became a national name, Keyes has the opportunity to find
out just how much support there is in the conservative evangelical
and Catholic communities. There will be no other Republican
available to “be more mainstream” or “have a better shot.” We’ll
learn how Keyes does as the only conservative or GOP name on the
ticket. As the party’s nominee, the press will be unable to ignore
him. Who can resist it?
Besides providing an excellent field test for Alan Keyes’
electability since he has become a well-known figure (something
that wasn’t true in his Maryland campaigns), another political
consideration looms large. George W. Bush will need every vote he
can get to have a chance in Illinois. I’m betting Alan Keyes can
improve turnout significantly. Even a single percentage point could
prove crucial. When asked why he ran for president when he
obviously had no chance, Keyes answered that as long as he was in
the race there were plenty of good Christian folks who would pay
attention to politics instead of tending their backyard gardens.
While Bush has strong appeal to Christian voters, Keyes has the
ability to rouse many who think politics irredeemable and would not
otherwise participate.
There is no downside here. The federalism argument has long ago
been breached by liberals like Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia and
Hillary Clinton in New York. Allowing federalism to thwart this
project would be like letting an opponent repeatedly beat you with
a rubber hose while you restrict yourself to the Geneva Convention.
Alan Keyes is making the right choice in taking his show on the
road in Illinois. If he wins, the GOP will add a seat and have a
better chance at maintaining control of the Senate, but the
pro-life movement will have its best political ally since Reagan
became President. For political observers, the Keyes-Obama matchup
will rank second only to Bush-Kerry as the two black intellectuals
have a showdown that promises to bypass the mundane in favor of the
biggest questions about God, government, and what justice
requires.
