In the popular and political mind, pop culture and conservative Christianity are separated like church and state. Britney, The Da Vinci Code and MTV are here; homeschooling, Left Behind and praise music are there. What God hath put asunder, let not man attempt to join.
So it’s surprising—yet for reasons we’ll get into, entirely sensible—that the candidate who has made the most effective use of pop culture in campaign 2008 is the former president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. Mike Huckabee, the bass-playing, weight-loss-book-writing, late-night-quipping, Chuck Norris–befriending pastor, has turned an easy facility with pop culture into free media for his underfunded -underdog campaign.
Huckabee’s campaign is like The Chronicles of Narnia or VeggieTales cartoons: a Christian crossover product. For Old Guard evangelical leaders, not getting pop culture used to be a badge of honor; think Jerry Falwell’s outing of Teletubby Tinky Winky or Pat Robertson’s listing immoral TV as one reason for the Sept. 11 attacks. But Huckabee doesn’t just engage with pop culture. He soaks in it.
Many voters first met Huckabee through the campaign spot in which he traded lines with action star Norris. The ad did more than defuse the humorless-preacher stereotype; it also spoke to Huckabee’s base. To a general audience, Norris is a camp figure. But, notes Daniel Radosh, author of the forthcoming book Rapture Ready!, about Christian pop culture, Evangelicals know Norris as the author of a popular spiritual memoir and co-author of two Christian western novels. To the public, appearing with Norris says Huckabee doesn’t take himself too seriously. But, Radosh adds, “within the Christian culture bubble, it’s a way of saying, ‘I’m one of you.'”
Ironically, Huckabee may benefit from media stereotypes. To people who think of evangelical leaders as Bible thumpers, a pastor playing Devil with a Blue Dress On on bass is like a dog walking on its hind legs—though rock bands are common in modern churches. “In New York and L.A., there’s this complete ignorance about what Evangelicals are really like,” says Alexandra Pelosi, a documentarian (and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter) who made the HBO movie Friends of God, about evangelical culture. “When I visited megachurches, the pastors were all making Napoleon Dynamite references.”
A cultural divide shows, too, between Huckabee’s base voters and the evangelical leaders who endorsed other GOP candidates. Adam Smith, editorial director of Relevant, a magazine for young Christians, says Huckabee’s engagement with the pop world speaks to younger Evangelicals. “Most of our readers don’t really see a demarcation between mainstream culture and ‘church culture,'” he says.
Huckabee’s greatest pop-culture weapon, though, may be the late-night shows. His humor is easy, wry and self-deprecating, but it’s also strategic. Some Huckabee positions—on abortion, the so-called FairTax, immigration, aligning the Constitution with “God’s standards”—would alienate some voters. But his joking reinforces his cultivated image as the conservative who’s “not mad at anybody.” And his dry irony—the lingua franca of pop culture—allows him to sandwich actual answers on awkward issues with his jokes. If he’s lucky, viewers won’t notice, or mind, the difference.
On a recent Colbert Report, Huckabee riffed to Stephen Colbert on Senator John McCain’s vow to pursue Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell.” “I will charge hell with a water pistol if necessary,” Huckabee deadpanned, as if to one-up McCain. How about outsourcing jobs? “As long as it isn’t mine.” Then Colbert asked if he believed that evolution was a farce. “It’s all a farce,” Huckabee said, in his usual dry tone. Ha ha! How droll! Except … um … he doesn’t believe in evolution.
Having a foot in both worlds likewise allows Huckabee to play both media darling and media outsider. When he ran into controversy over a Christmas TV ad, he could blame it on a secular-culture “war against Christmas.” When he pulled a negative TV ad yet showed it at a press conference, he explained the apparent hypocrisy by saying the skeptical press gave him no choice but to show it to them. Yet he’s also a more ubiquitous presence on newscasts than the HeadOn commercials. He’s running against, and on the backs of, the media.
Any crossover effort can have limits. Entertainer-preacher Huckabee could simply end up being the best-liked candidate among people who will never vote for him. But he has already become the political embodiment of the megachurch approach: get people in the door with rock or cappuccino or stand-up—but get them in the door. “Religion and politics and show business are all about attracting people,” Pelosi says. The big question is whether Huckabee can keep his lyrics from drowning out his music.
