{"id":518,"date":"2007-08-10T09:42:35","date_gmt":"2007-08-10T09:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/billy-graham-and-the-president.html"},"modified":"2007-08-10T09:42:35","modified_gmt":"2007-08-10T09:42:35","slug":"billy-graham-and-the-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/billy-graham-and-the-president.html","title":{"rendered":"Billy Graham and the Presidents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight on 20\/20, Charles Gibson devotes the hour to Billy Graham and his unique relationship with every American president<\/a> since Harry Truman. Gibson had the opportunity to sit down with Graham and three of his friends – Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and bill Clinton in a remarkable roundtable discussion. I had a chance to interview Gibson about the show and his own thoughts on religion and politics.
\n\"110022_206.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\nKuo<\/strong>: What impressed you or surprised you most about Billy Graham?
\nCharles Gibson<\/strong>: The thing that impressed me most is his ability to transcend political differences. That, be you liberal, be you conservative, Democrat, Republican, whatever your political persuasion, strong liberal like Johnson or a middle of the road Democrat like Clinton or a conservative like Reagan, all of them found commonality in their dealings with Graham.
\nAnd all of them found in Graham someone they could talk to, who was not judgmental, who was not there with any kind of artifice. Or as Clinton says, and I love the expression: \u201cThere\u2019s no shine on Billy Graham.\u201d
\nAll of them found something in Graham that they could relate to. And in this day and age, when people are so divided politically, I find that really fascinating.
\nAnd I also find fascinating the fact that presidents have to deal with the great questions of life just the same way everybody else does. They may be dealing with political issues and with issues of state on a level that none of us do but, when it comes down to the basic issues of life, we\u2019re all asking the same questions. And they found somebody to whom they could discuss those questions with comfort.
\nKuo<\/strong>: Who would you trust more in the Oval Office, Billy Graham or Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani or take your pick.
\nGibson<\/strong>: I think the point that we didn\u2019t let President Carter make enough in the program, but I thought was important to make, Carter said, I look at Graham as an icon. And Graham has been tremendously influential on me, even though he was supporting Gerry Ford and probably was supporting Ronald Reagan in 1980.
\nBut, Carter looks at him truly as a man of faith. And yes, he may pray republican, but essentially he very genuine in his sort of non-political, non-politically based faith.
\nBut, Carter said, I very much believe in separation of church and state, and so I was not going to have prayer breakfast at the White House. I was not going to be calling on religious leaders to pray at the White House. I was going to go down to the 16th Street Baptist Church and that\u2019s where religion was going to be. And it was not going to be in the Oval Office with any outside influences. I mean, I may have prayed often in the Oval Office, but I wasn\u2019t going to bring somebody else in.
\nI think Ruth Graham was absolutely right to kick him under the table when they began talking [with Lyndon Johnson] about the vice presidency.
\nI think the separation of church and state is extraordinarily important in our heritage and in our beliefs, and so Graham does not belong in the Oval Office as a president
\nKuo<\/strong>: So you think Graham shouldn\u2019t be president?
\nGibson<\/strong>: No, no. It\u2019s a terrible idea. Somebody once said to me years and years and years ago, okay, you can pick anybody you want to be president of the United States. Anybody. Who\u2019s up to the job? I mean, the job is so huge. Who do you pick? Anybody?<\/p>\n


\nAnd I remember I had just met Father Hesburgh<\/a> who was President at the time of Notre Dame. And I was a young kid and I was in a room with a bunch of other people. And I was just knocked out by the guy.
\nAnd so I just said Father Hesburgh. And then I thought, no, that\u2019s a dreadful idea. You know, to think about somebody with that kind of religious background in the White House.
\nBut, I was very impressed by the fact that Clinton, Carter, Bush and Bush all said it\u2019s very difficult to be in that Oval Office unless you have a strong faith.
\nKuo<\/strong>: In the show, you said part of Graham\u2019s success was that he preached a broad and inclusive evangelicalism. What do you mean by that?
\nGibson<\/strong>: I think his message is simple. It has always been simple and it\u2019s been very consistent. I listened to sermons that he gave in the \u201850s, and I listened to sermons he gave in 2005 at The Last Crusade, if sermon is the proper word for what he does. And it\u2019s always the same. It never varied.
\nThe simplicity of the message–he always said, \u201cI try to keep the message simple so that it could be accepted by a broad spectrum of people.\u201d He has stayed off opining about the divisive social issues on which a lot of people weigh in now from a religious perspective.
\nKuo<\/strong>: It\u2019s very interesting that you say that his message was simple and straightforward and it was hard to take offense with, even though he took a very orthodox evangelical position about needing Jesus for eternal life.
\nGibson<\/strong>: I never heard him say from a pulpit or from a stage, if you don\u2019t accept Christ you\u2019re a goner. It was always on the positive side of that.
\nI guess implicit in that is I don\u2019t go to enough evangelical rallies. As much as I go to services anywhere, I go to Quaker meeting, which is hardly someplace where there\u2019s anybody ranting at you.
\nBut, he doesn\u2019t dwell on the negative side of that. He just dwells–at least from what I\u2019ve listened to–on the positive side of it.
\nKuo<\/strong>: Senator Clinton, in talking about Graham and the hard time that she went through with her marriage said that he convinced her that it was \u201cright for her and her family and her country.\u201d Did that strike you in any way as an interesting or odd formulation?
\nGibson<\/strong>: Yes. I did find it to be a strange thing. And I thought that\u2019s strange that you would equate a deeply personal problem like that to the welfare of the nation.
\nAt the end though, I just thought it was kind of a–just a sort of rhetorical thing and she wanted to–and wanted a third point and so she threw that in.
\nAnd I don\u2019t think–I don\u2019t attach much to it, to be honest with you, other than the fact that she\u2019s running for president and that\u2019s kind of the sort of thing you throw in.
\nKuo<\/strong>: Did being with Billy Graham draw you closer to God?
\nGibson<\/strong>: No. No. But, that\u2019s a personal thing. When I have been with Graham, and I\u2019ve interviewed him three or four times, and then this was probably a fifth time down in Charlotte, it\u2019s always in a professional mode, you know. I\u2019ve never had a personal talk with him.
\nAnd it\u2019s very difficult to divorce the professional–what you\u2019re doing there as a reporter or as a host of a morning program or as an anchor of a television–of a news show–it\u2019s very difficult to divorce that. And so, I don\u2019t look at it through that prism, if you will.
\nI am very struck by trying to figure out the personal magnetism of the fellow and what it is about him that appeals to people, etc., etc. And so, maybe from that standpoint there\u2019s no question he is arresting.
\nWhen Mrs. Bush talks about the eyes, I know exactly what she means. When Mrs. Clinton talks about the sort of Old Testament Prophet kind of looks, I know what she\u2019s referring to. But from a personal standpoint, no, because I\u2019m always looking at him as a reporter when I\u2019m with him.
\nKuo<\/strong>: Sitting down with him, do you have any sense of regret from the man about politics, about faith?
\nGibson<\/strong>: Yeah. When you read Graham\u2019s writings, I think there is a little bit. I don\u2019t mean to overdo this–a little bit of wistfulness about the amount of time that he spent–.
\nFirst of all, there\u2019s a wistfulness about the amount of time he spent away from Mrs. Graham and away from North Carolina and away from his roots, I think.
\nBut, he feels it took a toll on him, because I think the disillusionment that he felt with Nixon and the disappointments I think in some presidents that he hasn\u2019t discussed.
\nYou know, he\u2019s so unremittingly positive and upbeat about the presidents. I\u2019d be interested to know if the presidents haven\u2019t in some respects disappointed him. I get some sense that perhaps they have a little bit.
\nAnd so, I think there\u2019s a bit of a wistfulness in his writings about all that. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight on 20\/20, Charles Gibson devotes the hour to Billy Graham and his unique relationship with every American president since Harry Truman. Gibson had the opportunity to sit down with Graham and three of his friends – Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and bill Clinton in a remarkable roundtable discussion. I had a chance to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-jesus","category-politics","category-popular-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nBilly Graham and the Presidents - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/billy-graham-and-the-president.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Billy Graham and the Presidents - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tonight on 20\/20, Charles Gibson devotes the hour to Billy Graham and his unique relationship with every American president since Harry Truman. 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