c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ Unlike The New York Times, the Washington Post occasionally is capable of laughing at itself. Recently, the Post compared election predictions of its best pundits with the predictions of a group of 10th graders from a Washington High School. The teenagers were right. The pundits, the experts, the talking heads, were dead wrong. Who needs them? Why don’t the papers carry political columns by 10th graders?

One wonders how the talking heads and the pundits have the audacity to continue to pontificate about American society. Since everyone has to earn a living, the talking heads and the pundits will continue to think they understand America better than anyone else in the country. Some people will doubtless continue to listen to them.

In fact, however, they are prisoners of their own tight, narrow little subculture. They talk to one another, they read one another, they listen to one another. If they all agree with one another, then obviously they are right. Right? Small town as world capital. Gopher Prairie, D.C.

Sally Quinn of the Washington Post, for example, recently explained that the people who live in Washington are proud of their city and want to get rid of President Clinton because he has made it look bad.

She not only seems to think that what the Washington establishment believes is more important than the votes of the rest of the country but has also forgotten that the overwhelming majority of citizens of Washington are African-Americans who strongly support the president.

Because they wanted the country to rebuke the president, the talking heads were quite certain the Republicans would make gains in the election earlier this month. Usually, it is true. The party which did not hold the White House has made gains in every off-year congressional election since 1934.

But this historical determinism blinded them to the survey data. They seemed incapable of realizing this was not exactly a typical off-year. Rather, quite the contrary, it was an off-year election in which the party dominating Congress, with the active help of the Washington elite, was trying to get rid of the president the country had elected. Ken Starr and Sally Quinn are allies!

Not only do they want to cancel out the votes of the rest of us, they also want to anticipate the judgment of history. History, they say, will reject Clinton. He will leave no important legacy. The last president the Washington elite wrote off was Harry Truman, now judged one of the great presidents of the century.

They have also created a false image of a powerful religious right that has a tremendous influence on American politics.

This portrait pleases the radical conservative Christians. It also delights Republicans because they like to think that they have some mass of voters of who support them.

At most, however, the religious right includes about 5 percent of the voters in the country. If one combines opposition to abortion under any circumstances and opposition to homosexuality one finds about 5 percent of Americans hold both positions simultaneously. If anyone is interested in inspecting the data, it can be found in my book,”Religion as Poetry.” Even among the Southern Baptists, only somewhat less than 10 percent measured in as members of the religious right on these two issues combined.

Moreover, the people holding that position are no more likely to vote or to be politically active than the rest the country. In fact they are usually less likely to vote.

Conservative religious activists are very well-organized, very articulate, and very dedicated. They have an influence on political discussion in this country going far beyond their actual size.

Indeed they are about the same proportion of Americans as are homosexuals who also, because they are well-organized, articulate and dedicated, have a disproportionate influence on political discourse.

However neither the homosexuals nor the religious right represent a mass of voters which can swing anything but the very closest election.

The urban folk tale about the power of the religious right appeals to the ponderous talking heads because it creates a scary and powerful enemy out in the boondocks of American society which likes the president and which is threat to the peace and harmony and happiness of their town. The barbarians are at the gate, it would seem, and a lot of them are from Arkansas.

END GREELEY