Piety versus Mommy

We’re going through a little holiday period of coolly calculated biographical re-introductions by the candidates for the U.S. Senate.

That is to say the race currently pits Mark Pryor’s Bible against Tom Cotton’s mom. It’s a study in best feet forward.

The candidates are taking a moment to say, hey, people, remember me, as in Pryor’s case, or let me tell you a little something about myself that you’ll like better, meaning my mother, as in Cotton’s.

—————— None of it has anything to do with a farm bill or disaster aid or student loans or Obamacare or shutting down the government.

The Bible is not always specific on contemporary American political issues. And Mommy is not going to be there on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

But it’s an attempt in each case at lingering favorable imagery, like Mike Beebe’s being born in a tar-paper shack.

Pryor has a new television commercial in which he, holding up his Holy Bible, professes that he is guided alone by the word of God.

His assertion is factual, I’m reasonably certain. Pryor’s faith bona fides are well-established. And his people keep reminding me he’s done this before, as in 2002, with an ad showing devotional time with his kids.

But it’s still a crass political play, then and now—professing your genuine religious faith for a political purpose to seek to ingratiate yourself with an evangelical electorate; then, by the way, explaining to an independent electorate that despairs of partisanship that neither political party is always right, not yours and certainly not his, but that this book right here, your guidepost and North Star, surely is.

Republicans are aghast. Exploitation of the Lord, the crude mixing of religion and politics for electoral advantage—that’s their field.

They’ve been so effective in Arkansas that I’ve had Democratic candidates tell me of these door-to-door experiences: People tell them they could never vote for them because they’re Democrats, and Democrats are against God.

Pryor, up against that, is giving testimony that you good people can feel free to vote for me because I’m not against God; I’m all for him. He’s saying he may be a version of a Democrat, yes, but, more than that, he’s a Bible guy.

I can see him getting advised by his political people that he needed to make such a commercial. I can see him hesitating. Then I can see him deciding that— political crassness aside— what he is going to say is true, so he’ll do it.

Any political gain will just have to be endured. Sometimes you must rise above crass appearance.

Democrats are defending Pryor’s Bible-thumpery because it’s factbased and Republicans always do it, and anything that defeats an extremist like Cotton—who opposes the farm bill and disaster aid and student loans and helped cause the shutdown—is all right by them.

Cotton, for his part, needed to polish his biography and personal image.

He has that heroic war thing, having left a good law-firm job to enlist to fight the bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that’s been offset a bit by his lack of an engaging personality and a series of draconian votes in favor of Wall Street backers and against disaster aid for Hurricane Sandy victims, food stamps for hungry children and market certainty for Arkansas farmers.

So it was time for the people of the state to meet Avis, his sweet mom, a retired 40-year educator and 22-year middle school principal—a vague Democrat in that politically vague rural Arkansas way, or so I formerly thought, considering that I met her at a Vic Snyder event.

At Tom’s Senate announcement, I sidled over and asked Avis if she was still a Democrat. She looked so pained that I withdrew the question. Moms don’t have to explain. So Cotton is seeking to show everyone that, despite his votes and out-of-state backing and manner, he comes from solid Arkansas stock, from a nice and loving mother, from someone who looks and talks just like so many good Arkansas mothers and grandmothers.

For good measure, Avis uses her introductory appearance to remind us again, lest we forget, that her son— like his daddy before—was a volunteer warrior against the bad guys, and an infantryman, not a military lawyer like they offered.

So there’s your big U.S. Senate race, a contest neither combatant can win on his own, owing to Pryor’s mushy centrism and Cotton’s aloof extremism.

One tactic in such a race is to rely on an orgy of attack on the other guy. We have seen some of that and we will endure much, much more.

But the other is to invoke more admirable or endearing allies.

Pryor puts on glasses to bury his piousness in the inspired word of his. Cotton stands smartly off-camera and reaps the loving support of his.