The Audacity of Hope

salutary, a check on personal ambition, a ballast against the buffeting winds of today’s
headlines and political expediency.
Beyond the Senate’s genteel confines, though, any discussion of religion and its role in
politics can turn a bit less civil. Take my Republican opponent in 2004, Ambassador
Alan Keyes, who deployed a novel argument for attracting voters in the waning days of
the campaign.
“Christ would not vote for Barack Obama,” Mr. Keyes proclaimed, “because Barack
Obama has voted to behave in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have
behaved.”
This wasn’t the first time that Mr. Keyes had made such pronouncements. After my
original Republican opponent had been forced to withdraw in the wake of some
awkward disclosures from his divorce file, the Illinois Republican Party, unable to settle
on a local candidate, had decided to recruit Mr. Keyes for the task. The fact that Mr.
Keyes hailed from Maryland, had never lived in Illinois, had never won an election, and
was regarded by many in the national Republican Party as insufferable didn’t deter the
Illinois GOP leadership. One Republican colleague of mine in the state senate provided
me with a blunt explanation of their strategy: “We got our own Harvard-educated
conservative black guy to go up against the Harvard-educated liberal black guy. He may
not win, but at least he can knock that halo off your head.”
Mr. Keyes himself was not lacking in confidence. A Ph.D. from Harvard, a protégé of
Jeane Kirkpatrick, and U.S. ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council under
Ronald Reagan, he had burst into the public eye first as a two-time candidate for a U.S.
Senate seat from Maryland and then as a two-time candidate for the GOP presidential
nomination. He had been clobbered in all four races, but those losses had done nothing
to diminish Mr. Keyes’s reputation in the eyes of his supporters; for them, electoral
failure seemed only to confirm his uncompromising devotion to conservative principles.
There was no doubt that the man could talk. At the drop of a hat Mr. Keyes could
deliver a grammatically flawless disquisition on virtually any topic. On the stump, he
could wind himself up into a fiery intensity, his body rocking, his brow running with
sweat, his fingers jabbing the air, his high-pitched voice trembling with emotion as he
called the faithful to do battle against the forces of evil.
Unfortunately for him, neither his intellect nor his eloquence could overcome certain
defects as a candidate. Unlike most politicians, for example, Mr. Keyes made no effort
to conceal what he clearly considered to be his moral and intellectual superiority. With
his erect bearing, almost theatrically formal manner, and a hooded gaze that made him
appear perpetually bored, he came off as a cross between a Pentecostal preacher and
William F. Buckley.
Moreover, that self-assuredness disabled in him the instincts for self-censorship that
allow most people to navigate the world without getting into constant fistfights. Mr.
Keyes said whatever popped into his mind, and with dogged logic would follow over a
cliff just about any idea that came to him. Already disadvantaged by a late start, a lack
of funds, and his status as a carpetbagger, he proceeded during the course of a mere
three months to offend just about everybody. He labeled all homosexuals—including