Ralph Reed’s Flip-Flop on Presidential “Character” and “Moral Leadership”

It seems Chris Christie now carries the mantle of the 1990s Christian Right

On January 21, 1999 Ralph Reed, the former Executive Director of the Christian Coalition, appeared on ABC’s Nightline with Ted Koppel to discuss Bill Clinton’s ongoing impeachment trial. Reed’s former boss, Pat Robertson, had just announced on The 700 Club that the impeachment trial was all but over: “Clinton won,” Robertson said. “They might as well dismiss this impeachment hearing and get on with something else because it’s over as far as I’m concerned.” So Reed was on Nightline to do some spin. He wanted to clarify that the 700 Club host was speaking as an objective commentator, not a political advocate for Clinton.

Reed, with his stylish coif and babyfaced look, tried to explain Robertson’s comments: “I think what his words expressed, Ted, is the level of frustration among grassroots conservatives that we have a president who has clearly violated the law, clearly committed perjury, clearly encouraged others to mislead a grand jury, and despite all that, his approval ratings remain very high.” Reed added, “That is enormously frustrating for people who are hungering for moral leadership at the highest level of government.”

Four days later Reed was on CNN as part of a forum, hosted by Judy Woodruff, on leadership in the twenty-first century. Once again Reed turned to the question of character: “We desire leaders of character. We desire leaders who can set a moral example for our children . . . We want people of integrity, we want people of moral fiber.” Reed implied that the members of the Christian Right were not looking for perfection in their candidates, just a willingness to admit errors and chart a different life course: “If you make a mistake in your past, we’re willing to forgive and move on, if you’re willing to change.” 

Fast forward nearly a quarter century. It’s June 23, 2023, and Reed is standing in front of a friendly crowd at the Washington D.C. Hilton. He is hosting “Road to Majority,” an annual conference sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a Christian right political action group he founded in 2009. He is warming-up the crowd with Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff jokes. Over the course of the next two days Reed’s audience will listen to speeches by Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and other Republican presidential candidates. 

It is a pro-Trump crowd and Reed is aware that not everyone in the room is going to like each of the GOP candidates he has invited to speak. “If someone comes out on stage that you disagree with on one or more issues,” Reed says, “keep that to yourself. Because when you go out and run for public office, and especially president of the United States, you expose yourself to enough abuse, vituperation, venom, and attacks, and we don’t need them to get in a room filled with believers in Jesus Christ.” If a particular candidate is “not where they need to be,” Reed adds, “let’s just love ‘em and pray ‘em right where they need to be.”

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was no doubt one of the candidates who needed love and prayer. His speech at Road to Majority put Reed’s call for civility and Christian charity to the test. Christie is unlike any other candidate in the GOP field. At the moment, it appears that his primary role is to use his straight-talking, Jersey-boy bombast to torpedo the candidacy of Donald Trump. 

Christie chose to focus his talk on character and moral leadership, subjects that were so important to Reed and his fellow culture warriors in the late 1990s. He began by reading Romans 5:3-4 from the evangelical-friendly English Standard Version: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and it is character that produces hope.” Christie tried to convince the crowd that his labors as a Republican governor in a blue state helped forge his character as a leader.

Those who have followed Christie’s political career know that he has not always been a man of character. “Bridgegate” and “Beachgate” will continue to haunt him as we get closer to the primary season. But in Washington last weekend he took responsibility for his missteps: “I believe what my [Catholic] faith requires of me is when I do sin, when I do make mistakes, when people who work for me do the same, that I must admit it.” People of character, Christie argued, ask for “forgiveness” and the seeking of such forgiveness, he suggested, is an essential part of moral leadership. Ralph Reed couldn’t have put it any better in 1999.

Christie then turned his torpedo scope on Trump: “Beware of a leader who never makes mistakes. Beware of a leader who has no faults. Beware of a leader who says, when something goes wrong, it’s everybody else’s fault.” Christie then told the pro-Trump crowd that “I am running [for president] because [Trump] has let us down,” He continued: “He is unwilling to take responsibility for any of the mistakes that were made, any of the faults that he has, and any of the things he has done. And that is not leadership, everybody—that is failure of leadership.”

At this point the conservative evangelicals in attendance booed Christie. How dare he accuse Donald Trump, the Christian Right’s political savior, of bad character and poor leadership! 

The following evening Donald Trump spoke at the Road to Majority banquet. He came out to thunderous applause from the crowd. The people on the platform—Reed, Mike Huckabee, Kari Lake, and Lindsey Graham, to name a few—treated him like he was some kind of messiah gloriously appearing from the back of the Hilton. As Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” filled the room, Trump stood erect, looking like a golden idol before a congregation of worshippers. And when the song ended, Reed’s crowd started chanting USA, USA, USA. 

As the former president spewed forth his now familiar brand of evangelical populism, and Ralph Reed basked in the aura of God’s anointed one, I dug into my research, gathered from the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive, and found the aforementioned Reed remarks in the midst of the Clinton impeachment trial. I listened to Reed ramble on about “moral leadership,” “character,” the connection between “forgiveness” and the “willingness to change,” and presidents “who can set a moral example for our children.” And then I thought how strange it is that today Chris Christie is the only GOP presidential candidate who seems to care about these issues.

John Fea is Executive Editor of Current

^{Photo: Gage Skidmore}