For the love of God, Madam Vice President, reverse your decision and come to the Archdiocese of New York’s Al Smith dinner. There’s still time, schedules free up, and announcing you’ll speak will make you look both humble (“on second thought”) and heroic (into the lion’s den).
Why would she snub the famous, ancestral, bipartisan dinner, which has taken place every third Thursday in October since 1945 (virtually in 2020), that Theodore White lauded as an irreplaceable ritual of every presidential year?
It couldn’t be disdain for institutional Catholicism. The dinner exists to raise money to feed the hungry, teach the child, heal the sick, house the immigrant.
It couldn’t be antipathy for Catholics themselves. They’re 70 million strong and the famous deciders of national politics, backing Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2016. They pick the winner!
It couldn’t be insensitivity toward Latinos, who compose an estimated one-third to half of the Archdiocese’s parishioners, who are its growing presence and its loving future.
It would be wrong to suggest every Catholic in America sits around thinking about who goes to the big Catholic dinner, and yet we . . . notice such things. Every four years it’s news. A simple refusal—I don’t have time—could be misinterpreted as disrespect for Catholics in general. Pennsylvania’s population is roughly a quarter Catholic. It would be sad if some of them misunderstood.
It couldn’t be fear of the audience. More than half are Democrats. The dais is the top officials of New York state, all of whom are Democrats.
It couldn’t be dislike of the archbishop—everyone likes Cardinal Timothy Dolan and he likes everyone back.
And it couldn’t be that the dinner is old. It is, but its age is its virtue. It’s stood the test of time, lasted in this world where nothing lasts.
It must be something else—a simple mistake, the kind made by fast-moving campaign advisers who have no time to reflect.
That’s what jolly Archbishop Dolan thinks. He was in Yonkers after the announcement, visiting a children’s hospital supported by the church. Pressed for a response, he said he was disappointed of course but it must be an error; Ms. Harris has always spoken so well and warmly of healing our divisions. “This hasn’t happened in 40 years,” he said, referring to Walter Mondale, the Democrats’ 1984 nominee, who declined the dinner. The cardinal helpfully recalled the outcome: “He lost 49 out of 50 states. I don’t wanna say there’s a direct connection.”
Ms. Harris’s staffers likely think she can’t be in nailed-down New York near the end of a close race, she’s got to be in the battlegrounds.
But an elegant man in a tough race of his own gave the best answer to that thinking. President Barack Obama took the podium of the 2012 Al Smith and said, “In less than three weeks, voters in states like Ohio and Virginia and Florida will decide this incredibly important election. Which begs the question: What are we doing here?” The audience roared. We are here, Mr. Obama said, not only to honor the Catholic church. “It says something about who we are as a people that in the middle of a contentious election season, opposing candidates can share the same stage; people from both parties can come together to support a worthy cause.”
The Al Smith dinner is the only occasion each presidential year when both major-party candidates come together, sit, talk, have a drink, give dueling speeches, and give them not only with wit and humor but while radiating a deep democratic regard. It is a splendid thing. Those candidates demonstrate through the fact of their togetherness that our democratic system, which often seems so frail, so ready to give way, still holds, still endures, that it has a hidden health, a latent strength that will bear us through. Politicians speak plaintively of finding common ground. This dinner is common ground.
To be dead to this tradition, to say no to it in a way that will inevitably bring more no’s in the future—the dinner is never convenient—is to contribute to the ending of something good. In that sense it is worse than a mistake, it is a sin.
Think of the fabled tradition Ms. Harris becomes part of if she comes. In the 1960 dinner, John F. Kennedy was sly, playing “the religious issue” to his advantage. “I am glad to be here at this notable dinner once again, and I am glad that Mr. Nixon is here also. Now that Cardinal Spellman has demonstrated the proper spirit, I assume that shortly I will be invited to a Quaker dinner honoring Herbert Hoover.” Quakers were a tiny minority, Hoover the least popular recent president. Under that Harvard veneer resided a tough little Boston pol.
The 2012 dinner was a triumph for Mitt Romney, formerly of Bain Capital. He was handsome and dashing in his white tie and tails, and he brought down the house when he spoke of the “wardrobe changes” campaigning entails—jeans for one event, a suit for another. “But it’s nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house.” He paid tribute to Mr. Obama as a man of “many gifts.”
The 2016 dinner will never be forgotten by anyone who was there. Hillary Clinton was radiant, won the crowd and, speaking after Mr. Trump, won the night. “You know, come to think of it, it’s amazing I’m up here after Donald. I didn’t think he’d be OK with a peaceful transition of power. . . . Every year, this dinner brings together a collection of sensible, committed, mainstream Republicans—or, as we now like to call them, Hillary supporters. . . . Whoever wins this election, the outcome will be historic. We’ll either have the first female president or the first president who started a Twitter war with Cher. . . . He has no policies—I keep hearing that. I’d actually like to defend him on this. Donald has issues, serious issues.”
The applause was thunderous. Mr. Trump got off a good line: “The media is even more biased this year than ever before, ever. You want proof? Michelle Obama gives a speech and everyone loves it, it’s fantastic, they think she’s absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gave the exact same speech and people got on her case.” (Critics had noted similarities between Mrs. Trump’s 2016 convention speech and Mrs. Obama’s from 2008.) The room exploded in laughter. Then he ruined it all, attacking Mrs. Clinton as “corrupt” and saying: “Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.” He was the only speaker ever to be booed.
Here is something Ms. Harris will receive if she attends: worldwide attention in the media capital of the world as she, having finished her speech, is embraced by the laughing cardinal in a picture that will be seen everywhere, and her lines repeated everywhere.
Or she can be in some grim studio on some grim podcast reciting her latest positions in a way that will move and dazzle no one.
We are a church of miracles—the water into wine, the lame man who walked, the campaign advisers healed of their blindness. The little children of New York will no doubt be praying on coming Sundays in Mass, as they put their pennies in the collection plate, “Oh God, please change Kamala Harris’s mind, let her come to us, help the nice lady avoid the Mondale Curse. Amen.”