Ted Cruz and David Brooks at the edge of an abyss

Republican presidential candidate debates have become bare-knuckle fights, and journalists now reflect the tension. New York Times columnist David Brooks last week complained about Ted Cruz’s “dark and satanic tones.” This week Brooks criticized the “pagan brutalism” in Cruz speeches: “not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy.”

As Brooks points to Cruz’s message, four fingers point back toward himself. Brooks has changed, and I’m glad. In George W. Bush’s 2000 “compassionate conservatism” campaign for president, Bush stressed biblical virtues of compassion, gentleness, and mercy, while GOP rival John McCain was more militaristic. Brooks was for McCain.

In a newspaper column early in 2000 I referred to a recently published Tom Wolfe novel, A Man in Full, that had a character convert to “the religion of Zeus.” I jocularly linked McCain and Brooks to that. Brooks in his Newsweek column jocularly shot back: “‘Brooks has faith only in Zeus-like strength,’ Olasky declared. It reminds me I need to get to the gym more often, not only to get some Olympian pecs, but to defend myself against blows from my allies.”

I don’t know if Brooks ever got to the gym, but he reportedly has gotten to some Bible studies. Back then, he ridiculed my argument as, “If we paid more attention to the Gospels, we’d prefer Bush’s supposed virtues, faith and charity, to McCain’s, honor and duty.” Now, he reportedly is paying some attention to the Gospels, and his political preferences have changed.

I empathize with Brooks as he sits on the hot seat for making a hellish reference. I appreciate his desire to apply to politics what he’s learning from the Bible. We’d both like a candidate committed to beating swords into plowshares, but that famous verse in Isaiah and Micah refers to a time when the Messiah “shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

The Messiah, though, has not yet returned, and we should not pretend that this is a Messianic time. At one moment in history, the desire to respond to some truly satanic characters led George W. Bush, rightly or wrongly, to make the keynote of his presidency swords and spears rather than compassion. At this moment in history, who’s the best candidate? That depends on what we think this moment is.

My column in the current issue of WORLD Magazine asks whether many Americans see ourselves in a moment like that of Britain in 1940, when appeasement policies had failed. Back then Clementine Churchill said her husband was the rare leader who possessed “the deadliness to fight Germany.” Ted Cruz has deadliness. Marco Rubio now tries to show deadliness as well. Donald Trump successfully mixes deadliness and clownishness. I’m with Brooks in not liking what he calls “edge of the abyss” talk. The problem is that we may be at the edge of the abyss.