You have to still remember, it still is a very close election. I think there is a temptation to say it all boiled down to one factor, and there's a lot of focus on faith and values. But what's very clear is that the country is a religious country, and people of deep faith want to know where their candidates stand on those issues, and speaking authentically to faith and religion is very important. It was not a surprise to many of us who knew that about the American electorate and knew that speaking in an authentic way that really connects to your values and to your faith is a good thing to do, because it's reassuring to the American people to know that their leaders, especially their president, is someone of deep faith and deep conviction. I think Senator Kerry certainly understood that and spoke to those issues, but you have to say that President Bush is someone who is highly regarded throughout the country as someone of deep personal faith, and I think that was reflected in part in the election result.[Senator Kerry] had lots of advisors, but he himself knew that it was important to speak that way. A lot of that came out as he prepared for his debates and really thought about how he wanted to talk about some of the deeply divisive moral issues that divide the country, like abortion, like stem cell research, like many of the things that he ended up talking about both in the debates and on the campaign trail. And as he did that he said, "Look, it's important for me to reflect on how my own Catholic upbringing informs my views on those issues." I think that, still, there were many people who didn't really know Senator Kerry, who didn't know about his own deep faith, but I think it's good that he talked about that and felt comfortable doing so, and I hope our candidates going forward will share their own faith experiences, because it's something that the country wants to know about.
During the preparation for the debates, I think Senator Kerry discovered that on issues like abortion, stem cell research, some of the issues that were naturally going to come up in the debates, he could authentically talk about his deep faith and Catholic upbringing in the context of those issues. So it was natural that he began to speak with more moral force about some of those same issues. It was not overtly designed to spring masses forward at the grassroots level. But it was designed to give people a glimpse into his heart and soul and what he truly believed, and I think that was certainly reassuring to many Democrats who were prepared to vote for Senator Kerry. It probably got some people to take a second look and made the election closer than it might have been. But it was also in the face of President Bush, who's clearly a person of deep personal faith and spirituality, and I think that's something that voters had to weigh in the balance.
[The Democratic religious outreach] was a fledgling effort. It's something that for a national Democratic campaign was rather new, and certainly a lot of good lessons [were] learned that we can build on. It was the first effort of its kind that I'm aware of, and it's one that we can clearly expand as we think of future elections. It's important to understand that churches and synagogues and temples and mosques are places where people come together, and they may have different political points of view. There are very few places in the social life of America now where people encounter folks who just believe differently, politically or religiously or otherwise. Understanding that you need to reach out to people in those safe sanctuaries where they come together to talk about issues of faith and meaning and community -- that's something that we'll have to continue to do and do effectively if we want to win national elections.[Religious outreach] was new and something unfamiliar to some political strategists in the campaign, but I think they will certainly look at the election results and think about America and understand that we need to learn how to do better if we're going to win national campaigns. There may have been some reluctance, but not a lot of it, and certainly not by Senator Kerry, who understood the importance of speaking from his own perspective of faith on some of the important issues that the elections are about.
In some corners of the campaign there were political strategists who maybe did not understand the importance of reaching out to people of faith at the outset, but certainly by the end -- and they saw Senator Kerry doing so effectively and authentically -- I think they understood that that's part of what the campaign was about and what it needed to be about. I'm sure that we put something in motion that we can build upon for future campaigns.
[My] advice is, first and foremost, be authentic. Be who you are. If you're a person of faith and some deep religious conviction, there's no harm in talking about that. In fact, it's good for you to help connect to people who really want to know where you stand on the moral spectrum, in addition to where you stand on the political spectrum. And I think that's an important lesson learned from this campaign, that there's no reason to hide our light under the bushel if we really want to share who we are as people of faith. But we have to do so genuinely, authentically; it can't be phony. It can't be cooked up by pollsters, because it has to come from what [are] really deep, spiritual values that people really believe, deep in their heart and soul.
As is always the case with exit polls, sometimes we overstate what the data tell us. It's a very complicated election result, [there is] a lot at work, and the tendency to divide up everything into red and blue and make things simpler than they really are is always there. There are, clearly, out in those red states many people of deep faith who are Democrats, who voted for John Kerry. That is something to certainly build upon and something to expand. We have got to be a party that can be competitive across the heartland of America and, I would argue, even in the South if we are going to win national elections. We have to find the right way to connect to those deeply felt values in the heartland of America that are really who we are as the American people. If we can't speak to those interests and can only see ourselves speaking to the more secular side of things that maybe are predominant in the so-called blue states, I don't think we're going to have a chance of winning national elections. So it's a complicated result. It's not necessarily as simple as some of the instant reads, the instant analysis of the exit polls, but it is something that gives us at least a kernel of truth in that conventional wisdom that we ought to go look at carefully.
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