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Next time you hear a friend say this, if you want to have an interesting conversation, do a little probing at the "he can't win" assertion.  Start with this question: "Do you mean he can't win in this election, or do you mean he can't win ever?"

What you'll be getting at is whether or not your friend who says, "...he can't win" is taking a long view or a short view. My guess is that you'll find he's taking a short view -- he's thinking only of this election. He's not thinking about how what happens now, in this election, can have an impact on elections yet to come -- 2004, 2008, 2020, 2040... (And very likely he's got the primaries and the general election all muddled up in his head, as if there were not very important differences between the party process for selecting a nominee, establishing a platform, etc., and the national process for selecting a president... but that's another subject, for another day).

Perspective is important. The short view is focused entirely on the present, this election, the next 10 months and no more. With the short view, if Alan Keyes can't win now, that's all that counts.  But with the long view, the present election has a very different significance. One thing that will happen through the election is that someone will be elected president of the United States. But there are other things about the election that are important. This year's election is not an island in history, with no links to past or future. Rather, it is one election in a long train of elections stretching away into our future (we presume). We all know, or ought to know, that some things will have to be accomplished not in one election but across many elections. 

The long view assumes that important gains can be made for our republic even if the election is lost to another pro-abort or to a collaborator.  It may take a series of campaigns to put godly leadership in the White House, but that doesn't mean the campaigns prior to the one resulting in a final ballot box win are unimportant. Quite the contrary. Great things are typically accomplished over time. If you want to build a house with a good roof, you don't start construction with the roof. There's an orderliness about how things are built, politically as well as with houses.

It's worth noting here that already Alan Keyes has made amazing gains over his 1996 run for the presidency. In that election he got 6 percent in Iowa and results dropped from there. Most states gave him a percent or two at best. After New Hampshire, the media was able to squeeze him out of debates (first in South Carolina, then in Atlanta, where he was actually hauled away from a debate by the police), notwithstanding the fact that he was a bona-fide candidate, had not dropped out of the race, and was ballot-qualified in almost every state.

This time is different. Dramatically different. The media has not been able to exclude Alan Keyes from debates. He got 14 percent of the vote in Iowa and as I write, he's picked up 3  to 6 percent in every state since. He is far better known to the American people. Many more Americans have seen him speak and debate. He has left an impression which is felt widely.

You can look at the numbers and say, "five percent is pretty puny" -- and I have to agree with you. Five percent isn't much. But I'm familiar with recent history and I tend to do my own analysis, so I come to some conclusions that aren't sanctioned by the media bosses. For instance, what I see is not just the five percent but the incredible gain over the 1996 election. And I see that Alan Keyes has made it impossible to completely ignore the moral crisis of our day. The collaborators can't just talk money, money, money, because Keyes stands against them in the debates and eloquently rejects the notion that our problems as a nation are money problems. "We don't have money problems, we have moral problems."

If it were not for Alan Keyes, do you think abortion would have been talked about as much as it has been already? If you think that Messrs. Bush and McCain, without the goading of Alan Keyes, would have willingly spoken one word about abortion, or identified themselves unequivocally with any statement abhorring this violence, you haven't been paying attention. These are not the kind of men who look for anything but the easy, let's-all-get-along political path. The perfect statement, for them, is one everyone will agree with, not one which delivers the plain truth. Nothing in the way they approach the subject of abortion suggests that legalized murder of children has touched their hearts or energized their minds. They're money guys. Collaborators.

I take the long view. If Alan Keyes can get two percent in 1996 and five percent in 2000, perhaps he'll get 15 percent in 2004 and 30 percent in 2008... he could move into the White House as early as January 2013 (I believe he's now 48 years old). Certainly I'm on shaky ground in taking a trajectory I've mapped between 1996 and 2000 (early 2000, at that) and projecting it a decade into the future, without factoring in things (unknowable things, of course) that might advance or hinder progress, but I don't intend to make predictions about specifics like that. I just want to point out that there's a big difference in the long view and the short view. A big difference.

It may be my children and your children who can build on and benefit from what Alan Keyes is doing now. If I don't see the harvest at least I have the pleasure of seeing ground broken and seeds planted. I certainly don't want to be numbered among the whiners who say "I like him but he can't win... we need to be practical about these things..." and so on and so on. I don't mind being part of something important while it is still small. My hope for the future is that it will not remain small, that over some unknown period of time, whether years or decades, the United States will awaken to the truth about the murder of children by abortion techniques, just as it awakened to the truth about the injustice of slavery. The reason I must support Alan Keyes now, in this election, is not that there is any great likelihood he will be able to end the killing immediately, but because it's very clear that he is part of a great movement, still small, that will one day, by God's grace, end the killing and bring a renewed reverence for the Creator. That's the movement I want to be a part of.

The hardy souls who headed west on the Oregon trail in the 1840s and 50s didn't expect to travel on divided highways and stay in Hampton  Inns. They followed tracks across the prairie left by those who went before, which is what we still do, if you think about it, but we benefit from the toil and vision of others. Today I can drive to Oregon on paved roads and stay in nice hotels all the way -- only 150 years later! Amazing! Really, it's quite astonishing... And on primary day in Pennsylvania, I'll cast a vote for Alan Keyes, fully expecting that in this election I'll be part of a still small minority of Americans who are looking not at the toes of their boots, but at the horizon.

Peter Barry 3/7/2000

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