Jimmy Carter and religion in USA presidential elections.
.> My impression is that a real shift came with the administration of Jimmy Carter. Pre-Carter, nobody really much cared whether the president was religious.
.> But Carter, who was probably sincere, somehow taught party managers that if you put on a pious face, you appeal to a big voting bloc. Since Carter, every presidential candidate has pretended to religious experience.
.> In any case, it became possible to mobilise religious sentiment, which had always been there, and to turn it into a major political force, into the focus of political discourse, displacing social and economic issues.
.> T ake right now. For most of the population, the major issues are things like exploding healthcare costs. But neither political party wants to deal with that; they’re too much in the pocket of the insurance companies and the financial institutions and so on. So instead they have battles about evolution theory and intelligent design, and they’ll argue about that. Meanwhile, the rich go on their way, running the country.
https://chomsky.info/20061103/#
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