Keeping the Faith

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The candidate is an ordained and militant Protestant minister, crusading to wrench his party from the clutches of the moderates he scorns. But he does so < in the manner of a polished TV performer: he is immaculately attired in a dark suit, handsome, poised, physically commanding, capable of speaking with cool irony as well as passionate rhetoric. His constituency, built on a network of local churches, follows him with a fervor that is the envy of more conventional politicians. He provokes so much opposition from his party's mainstream that only a miracle could win him the 1988 presidential nomination, yet the candidates who have a realistic chance at that prize treat him gingerly, with a mixture of respect and fear. The reason: he might bring millions of new voters flocking to the party banner, but he might also cause them to rebel and in frustration shun the party.

Who is this galvanizing and polarizing force in presidential politics? Ironically, the description applies equally well to two clergymen who are antipodes in almost every other way: Pat Robertson on the Republican right and Jesse Jackson on the Democratic left. Though both speak in the cadenced tones of the pulpit and address themselves to a constituency that feels embattled and disenfranchised, they differ in race, personality, theology and cultural attitudes. From opposing ends of the political spectrum, each of them is playing a similar role in his party's early maneuvering for 1988 -- and playing it with a gusto that promises (or threatens) to alter significantly the shape and outcome of the long presidential campaign that lies ahead.

The potent appeal of each was on display last week. Jackson, 44, gave an uncompromising keynote at the annual convention of Operation PUSH, the civil rights group he founded 15 years ago, a day after playing host at a dinner for Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Robertson proved in Tuesday's Michigan primaries that he can turn his faithful flock into grass-roots political organizers and then headed off to Iowa, where the first real presidential caucus will be held almost 18 months from now. In the long run Jackson is likely to wield more clout. One reason: he can make a credible threat of mounting a disruptive third-party candidacy should he fail to swing the Democrats to the left. Robertson, 56, insists, "I work at coalitions. I wouldn't dream of doing anything to hurt the Republican Party."

Robertson, the smiling televangelist who is the founder and star of the Christian Broadcasting Network, is winning more attention at the moment, in part because of the novelty of his latest cause. Last week he did well enough & in the first round of Michigan's convoluted delegate-selection process to put himself firmly on the G.O.P. presidential map. The results hardly added up to the "absolutely amazing victory" that Robertson quickly claimed. Yet he made a more than respectable showing in the number of his supporters who won election as delegates to county conventions, much better than anyone would have expected even a few months ago from a preacher little known outside the ranks of Evangelicals. In doing so, he forced George Bush, Michigan's nominal winner, to make a costly effort to retain his status as front runner far earlier than the Vice President had intended. He also denied Congressman Jack Kemp the chance Kemp sought to emerge as the clear alternative to Bush.

Michigan illustrated Robertson's basic strength: instilling a political mission among Evangelicals who were previously inactive in campaigns. In politics these days, the label Christian has connotations that go far beyond religious beliefs; it refers to advocates of a social and political agenda based on the conservative moral outlook shared by many Evangelicals. "It's so great to have some Christians in politics," says John Edison, a community- college student and Robertson precinct delegate from the town of Portage, Mich. In Iowa such Christian activists have already won effective control of the Republican organizations in two counties, including the one that embraces Des Moines. Robertson is not yet an avowed candidate, but he acts like one. Just before the Michigan primary he hit nine cities in that state in three days, besides jetting to Anaheim, Calif., and Dallas for fund-raising events. Though he still heavily stresses social issues such as abortion and school prayer, he has moved beyond them to take stands on all manner of subjects. In foreign affairs, he has revived Ronald Reagan's long-disused description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and predicts its demise "in our lifetime."

A Yale Law School graduate and smooth TV performer, Robertson is capable of giving a thoroughly reasoned admonition against the dangers of huge budget deficits, as he did last week in Iowa. But no matter what his topic, his speech is laced with religious allusions; he has a preacher's habit of stretching out words (free-dom, A-mer-i-ca) for emphasis. Though he smiles brightly and often, even when the smile is out of sync with the tone of his words, he taps what he describes as "a rage and frustration building up in - certain quarters of this country." As with Jackson, there is still an angry edge to some of Robertson's remarks. He not only inveighs against the Supreme Court ("this unassailable oligarchy (that) would rule us") but insists that its decisions are not necessarily the law of the land. He stops short, however, of saying that a President should defy those decisions. That, he says, "is virtually impossible."

Robertson takes pains these days to come across as an unthreatening candidate to those who do not share his religious fervor. Yet a fund-raising letter referring to the success his delegate candidates were having in Michigan began with the exultation "The Christians have won! . . . What a breakthrough for the Kingdom!" In addition, he belongs to the charismatic strand of Evangelicalism that discomfits even some fellow Evangelicals. In the TV studio, Robertson has prayed openly for healings and miracles, calling on the power of God to cure maladies in his audience as diverse as cancer and a slipped disk. He has written openly of his experiences in speaking in tongues, prophecy and miracles. His autobiographies recount detailed conversations he has had with God, along with tales of people physically struggling with demons.

Even Evangelical Christians, who are far from a unified bloc, are not universally enthusiastic about Robertson's candidacy. "We've got a badly fragmented Christian community that cannot be lumped together," says Robert Grant, head of the religious-right lobbying group Christian Voice. Grant agrees with Robertson on most issues, but is tepid about his candidacy. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority, has endorsed Bush.

To remain a credible factor in the year before the 1988 campaign gets under way in earnest, Robertson must broaden his appeal and pull together a staff that can handle the complex logistics of a national campaign. One thing working in his favor is that he is positioned to run well in the South's pod of primaries, caucuses and conventions that will be held in the same week in March of 1988 and will choose perhaps 30% of the delegates to the national conventions. (So is Jackson, who may reap the South's black Democrats the way Robertson may reap its religious-right Republicans.) At a minimum, Robertson could present the eventual Republican nominee with the same kind of dilemma that Jackson posed for Walter Mondale in 1984: how to capitalize at the polls on the fervor of his legions without frightening away even larger numbers of more moderate voters.

Jackson promises to redouble that dilemma for the Democratic banner carrier in 1988. In speeches and interviews, he pours scorn on anyone who will move the party to the center. His particular target these days is the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderate elected officials mostly from the South and West. Jackson sneers that its initials, D.L.C., stand for Democrats for the Leisure Class. It is composed, he says, of "Democrats who comb their hair to the left like Kennedy and move their policies to the right like Reagan."

Jackson's own basic platform (substantial cuts in military spending, a massive revival of Great Society-style social programs) is unchanged from 1984. But, like Robertson, he is seeking to take a stand on everything. In a speech last week he pledged to "study and master Soviet-American relations." His positions in many cases are the exact reverse of Robertson's. While Robertson advocates that the U.S. recognize the Nicaraguan contras as a government in exile, Jackson invited the Sandinista leader to dinner at his home in Chicago and some "backyard diplomacy" under a basketball hoop. Earlier, Jackson participated in drafting a statement that Ortega read to a PUSH meeting, pledging efforts to ease friction with both the Roman Catholic Church and the U.S.

Jackson is seeking to make his "rainbow coalition" less monochromatic. His technique is to back the demands of almost every discontented group in society: feminists, distressed farmers, striking meat packers and TWA flight attendants, and laid-off oil-field workers. Says one party strategist: "His is an effort to take every political grievance that ever existed and make a political movement." He has had some early success: though organized labor primarily regards him with deep suspicion as a potential party-splitting force, he has been invited to give the keynote speech Monday at the convention of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Sums up one party power: "Contrary to the old adage that a souffle doesn't rise twice, Jesse has the potential to be a bigger factor in '88 than in '84." He has already served notice that he will once more demand that convention delegates be apportioned in strict ratio to a candidate's state primary votes, thus adding a battle over party rules to the struggle over his political demands. The big question is whether Jackson is prepared to take his followers into a third-party candidacy. Jackson ducks that question when it is asked directly, replying, "A whole lot of what will happen with that will rest upon the shoulders of the regular Democrats." Some of his supporters are more open. Says Washington Consultant Ernest Green, a Jackson strategist in 1984: "It's clear that card is in his back pocket, and it should be."

Robertson, for all his apparently sincere protestations of harmony, could be a disruptive force. Though his stands on issues are much closer to his party's center than are Jackson's, the Evangelical Christians he is bringing into precinct politics are unused to the give-and-take of party bargaining. Visible strains are surfacing between them and regular Republicans, who welcome their fervor but do not want local organizations taken over by zealots. The critical question is how far right the eventual nominee will have to move to avoid alienating Robertson's supporters at the convention and secure their support in the general election. The eventual Democratic candidate will have to face the issue of how far from the left he can stray without antagonizing Jackson's fold. Like so much else about the two dissimilar preachers, the questions they raise for their parties are mirror images.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Des Moines and Jack E. White/Chicago