Newsweek magazine declared 1976 as “The Year of Evangelical” after Jimmy Carter, an unknown former Governor of Georgia and self-declared born-again Christian, surprised political pundits by winning the Democratic Party's nomination for president. Throughout the campaign, Carter broke with tradition and discussed his religious faith and its influence on his life and politics. Carter's values strategy helped him win the presidency and was the focus of many contemporary accounts of the election.
In The Election of the Evangelical: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and the Presidential Contest of 1976, Daniel Williams, a Professor of History at West Georgia University, offers a new assessment of the election that redefines its role in history. He persuasively asserts that the 1976 election, which is often portrayed as a nondescript race between two uninspiring candidates, marks the end of FDR New Deal economics-driven politics and is a precursor to modern culturally polarized campaigns.
Williams's book is another in the highly acclaimed University Press of Kansas series on presidential elections. It is a well-written, comprehensive account that starts with the pre-nomination process and continues through the general election and beyond. Williams uses materials unavailable to earlier authors, such as presidential memoirs and biographies, online presidential archives, and insider accounts of the campaign to support his assertion. The work is scholarly, readable, and provides valuable insights while adding to the otherwise scarce recent literature on the 1976 contest.
Williams organizes his eleven chapters around four broad areas: the state of the parties in the aftermath of George McGovern's debacle and Richard Nixon's resignation; the Democratic and Republican primaries and conventions; the general election campaign; and an assessment of the election results and implications. Within this construct, Williams interweaves a discussion of religion and cultural issues that shed light on the political changes that were subtly taking place.
Williams frames his narrative using Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon's groundbreaking book The Real Majority (Coward-McCann, 1970), which portrayed the American electorate as largely centrist but leaning to the left on economic issues and to the right on cultural issues. The authors argued that the electorate was becoming more conservative on cultural matters, while the Democrats were moving to the left. Wattenberg and Scammon suggested the Democrats modify their views or lose voter support; the party did not heed their advice and lost the 1972 presidential election in a landslide.
Going into the 1976 election, the unknown question was whether the Democrats’ flirtation with the cultural left was an aberration or a harbinger of things to come. Williams provides a detailed account of the 1976 nomination process to demonstrate what we now know—that it was not an anomaly as both parties were moving away from the cultural center and a new political paradigm was developing. He illustrates this transformation through changes in candidate positions, constituency group influence, and party platforms. This last method was particularly informative.
Williams describes how Carter won the Democratic nomination by portraying himself as a moderate political outsider who would restore trust in government through honesty and competency. His goal was a center-Left party platform on economic concerns that avoided the polarizing social issues of 1972. Williams suggests that Carter achieved most of his objectives but encountered resistance from delegates on cultural matters. While he was able to exclude planks promoting gay rights and the legalization of marijuana, he was unable to block provisions advocating for abortion, busing, and gun control. On these issues, delegates chose ideology over the candidate. Cultural liberalism was becoming part of the Democrats' identity.
Williams also provides a vivid account of the Republican contest, where incumbent President Gerald Ford narrowly defeated the more conservative former Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. Ford, a religious and political moderate, held similar views to Carter on many issues. Cultural activists overrode Ford's wishes and adopted strong stances in opposition to abortion, busing, and gun control, reflecting the growing ascendancy of the cultural Right within the GOP.
During the fall campaign, Carter emphasized traditional Democratic economic policies, while distancing himself from the more culturally liberal views espoused in the party platform. Williams suggests that Carter's emphasis on values allowed him to make significant gains among Evangelicals, while his personal opposition to abortion helped him with Catholics. Carter's strategy contributed to his victory and created the façade that the New Deal coalition still existed. This perspective was short-lived.
What was not evident in 1976 was clear by 1980. Cultural politics were a powerful force within each party. Issues such as abortion and school prayer had become litmus tests for many voters when determining which party to support. Many socially conservative Democratic Catholics and Evangelicals were moving toward the Republicans, whereas liberal mainline Protestants were shifting from the GOP to the Democrats. Cultural polarization had become part of American politics.
Williams's compelling new narrative of the 1976 race is long overdue. He does not dismiss or exaggerate the role of religion in the election but instead places it within a broader context. Carter's use of religious rhetoric set a precedent that remains part of American politics to this day. More importantly, Williams contributes to our understanding of the gradual shift that was taking place among the electorate due to changing social mores, which contributed to new voting patterns and party polarization. The Year of the Evangelical will likely replace Jules Witcover's Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency (Viking, 1977) as the seminal work of the 1976 election.
