Remarks

This study analyzes the ways in which the issue (or issues) of religion and politics were shaped during the 1984 campaign partially by the exigencies of political rhetoric and partially by the logic of the problem itself. The form in which the issue(s) of religion and politics came into view is traced in four addresses: one each by President Reagan, Walter Mondale, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Governor Mario Cuomo. One premise of this study is that such political speeches are in some sense and to some extent rational discourse aimed at persuading the unpersuaded that the speakers’ moral, political, and constitutional perceptions are cognitively superior to opposing perceptions. The author finds two substantive issues in the argument: the “toleration/church and state” issue and the “relation of Catholic moral principles and public policy” issue. The manner in which the speakers defend their position on these issues is explicated so as to reveal the strengths and weaknesses in each speaker's formulation. The limits of the accuracy of each side's rhetoric are identified in such a way that it becomes evident they are debating importantly different interpretations of principles on which they nominally agree. It is argued that the core of the debate concerned whether religious citizens have a right to try to change the drift towards an exclusion of religious traditions and practices and of religiously based moral values from a place in our public policy or whether such exclusion is required constitutionally and hence attempts to change its attack or undermine the Constitution.