Global Dialogues

Ronald Reagan was reviled by nearly half of the U.S. population even after his landslide second-term victory. Before he was America's mayor, Rudolph Giuliani was a bombastic, notoriety-craving prosecutor. The U.S. bishops drew admiration for high-minded pastoral letters on nuclear weapons and the economy—and promptly squandered it through heartless dealings with the AIDS crisis and a campaign of denial about the clerical sexual abuse of minors.

Those examples from the 1980s serve as a several-sided reminder of the complications of any attempt to measure moral authority. I'm the author of a forthcoming book dealing with the decade, and as I did lots of reading about that era, I couldn't fail to note that many of the claims made about our present calamitous times were made about those times, too. There was widespread distrust in government-which Reagan tapped into through privatization schemes that actually enlarged the cost and reach of government. There was a sense of the breakdown of law and order—which enabled Giuliani to position himself not just as an ambitious politician but as a salvific crusader. There was a perceived lack of leaders with moral authority, which led prestige to accrue to Pope John Paul—prestige that then deterred scrutiny of clerical sexual abuse and of the Vatican’s approach to the problem. 

So in thinking about the present, I find, one needs continually to control for the rhetoric of decline—a rhetoric which is deeply wound into most traditional journalism, and is a fundamental aspect of Catholicism, too. And in the United States, one has to control for the rhetoric of triumphalism—which equates the fate of the world with the fate of the United States and its trading partners. 

That said, we are living now, not in 1985, and the absence of moral authority that many of us in the U.S. feel is actual, even if not demonstrably worse than that of past times and other places.

How, then, to assess the present condition of moral authority? It's complicated–but I think one useful step forward would involve applying yet another control. In thinking about moral authority, we need to resist the rhetoric that identifies moral authority with victory–with power and its exercise. 

Traditional journalism's coverage of political life in the United States and elsewhere is a lot like sportswriting: who is winning, who is losing; who holds the cards, and so on. A procedural vote in the U.S. House of Representatives that goes along party lines is registered as a “W” for the speaker. The Republican Party's control of the White House and both halls of Congress, together with its influence on the courts through past and future appointments, is akin to a trifecta or a triple crown. And just as professional sports has expanded through television so as to fill every hour of every day—the only game in town—so electoral politics (a different kind of contest, but a contest nonetheless) has crowded out culture, the arts, and ordinary life. 

Of course (applying my controls) I must consider that perhaps it was always thus, and perhaps it is not so beyond the U.S. and its trading partners. Perhaps–but the current state of things is real. 

The present Republican power is peril-inducing, but it is only power. It lacks moral authority.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of figures in the United States who can claim moral authority—which is scanted simply because it is not attached to electoral triumphs. Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have led rallies unprecedented for their size and their critique of the political establishment—but are discredited because they can't get a “W” overnight. The novelists Marilynne Robinson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Barbara Kingsolver; Bishop Marion Budde, and Rev. William Barber; the journalists David Remnick, Andrew Sullivan, and M. Gessen—their moral authority is considerable, but is overlooked because it has been gained integrally, not sponsored or consecrated by state power.

How, then, can moral authority be brought to bear on state power? There is no simple answer, and even a “W” in the midterm elections would have only limited effects. But there are obvious strategies. One is to induce more people with moral authority to involve themselves in the mucky world of electoral politics. Another is for those in government who lack a “W” to claim moral authority by other means: it isn't too late for Democratic legislators to frame a “shadow cabinet” whose members could work the press in symbolic contrast to the administration's feckless appointees.

Or people with moral authority could embrace the plain truth that positions of real power exist outside of government. In this moment, Barack Obama is a figure who retains unmistakable moral authority. Eight years after he left Washington, DC, he is still 15 years younger than the man in the Oval Office—but his moral authority awaits fresh exercise and has been diminishing through disuse. 

In this moment, a position of power that recent events have set in striking contrast to the U.S. presidency is the presidency of Columbia University—from which Obama graduated in 1983. (I received an M.F.A. from Columbia in 1991 and later taught there.) For Obama to take up the job as the president of Columbia would be a bold, fresh assertion of his moral authority, and that of the institutions—universities, law firms, technology companies—which the Trump administration seeks to subjugate to the state. What do you say, President Obama? Duty calls, and alma mater, too.

Paul Elie is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center and the moderator of the Faith and Culture conversations series, hosted by the Office of the President.