Ralph Reed

Before a group of black pastors, Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed apologized yesterday for the role of white evangelicals who opposed civil rights and promised a $1 million fund-raising effort to aid burned churches. Reed demanded that the government and citizens put an end to the wave of church fires. Nearly 40 black churches have been hit by fire during the last 18 months, federal officials say. "This is the greatest wave of terrorism against the black church since the height of the civil rights movement," Reed said.

Ralph Reed has always sought to usher conservative Christians into the world of politics, to get them "a place at the table. " Now he wants to set the table. Two weeks ago, he announced that he was quitting his job as prime tactician and friendly face of the Christian Coalition, to become a campaign consultant. The political world is still buzzing with the news; after all, Reed is a master competitor who once warned that if you fight against him, "you don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. " So his critics naturally hope his departure will cut the clout of the religious right.

In the ongoing drama of the budget debate - which smothered this city's regular functions until Mother Nature took over - one key player has been conspicuously offstage. Ralph Reed Jr., the executive director of the Christian Coalition, who has steered his organization into the forefront of political interest groups, is lying low, "flying below radar" as he once put it. Considering the ideological nature of the struggle and its possible influence on next month's presidential primaries, Reed's reticence to join the public fray suggests that he knows something the rest of us do not. He thinks he does.

The better to hear America singing, filmmakers Shainee Gabel and Kristin Hahn crisscrossed the country by car during the summer of 1995 and recorded the varied carols of poets and pols, waitresses and gas jockeys, rappers and historians. Anthem: An American Road Story, their lyric hymn to the nation at the brink of the millennium, is an astonishingly upbeat affair. Americans may be worried about the depletion of the United States' nonrenewable resources, but they have enormous confidence in its citizens' ever-replenishing resourcefulness.

My favorite battle this presidential election year is not the one between the two main candidates. It's the one that has emerged between feuding groups of right-wing Christian conservatives. Ralph Reed, leader of the Christian Coalition - easily the largest and most influential of such groups - has angered and alienated many of his traditional allies. And there is an ironic justice in the fact that the issue causing the most friction between Reed and other right-wingers is one that traditionally has been a rallying point for them: gay and lesbian rights.

Sen. Arlen Specter yesterday lashed out at the Christian Coalition for excluding him from its convention because he disagrees with its views, while a group that fights bigotry questioned whether Specter was being singled out because he's Jewish. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, was the only Republican presidential candidate not invited to address the 3,500 conservatives attending the annual convention here this weekend. He was invited to speak to a smaller group but declined.

NEW YORK STRIKE DEADLINE COMES AND GOES The New York Post went to press as usual last night after negotiators for labor and management agreed to continue contract talks, breaking a strike deadline set by the paper's biggest union. Both side will continue to meet through the weekend, with the first session planned for 2 p.m. today, said Barry Lipton, head of The Newspaper Guild local. "The Guild and its committee have agreed to stop the clock," he said after emerging from nine hours of talks.

Relations between churches and political institutions in this country have never been free of trouble. But they are vastly complicated these days by the increasing use of invective on the radical religious right - and by the answering call from its opponents for restraints bordering on censorship. When the Rev. Jerry Falwell calls on Christians to fight the "godless proposals of the Clinton administration," he transforms political argument into a holy war. Such intemperance invites intemperance from the other side - calls for repealing tax exemptions on church property, for example, or complaints that anti-abortion politicians are manipulated by the Vatican.

Few things in this world could bring Susan Estrich, feminist lawyer and manager of Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign, and Ralph Reed, the head of the Christian Coalition, together as collaborators. But the Salzburg Seminar is like few things in this world. As it approaches its 50th birthday, this unique venture in international education has developed into something its founders could hardly have imagined. In 1947, three young Harvard graduates persuaded the widow of Max Reinhardt, the theater director and co-founder of the Salzburg Festival, to let them use Schloss Leopoldskron, the 250-year-old Reinhardt villa on the outskirts of this city, as the site of a conference center for American and European intellectuals.

The Promise Keepers rally has me, as a Conservative Jew, less than enthusiastic. While the Jewish community in America was busy preparing for Rosh Hashana, cooking and cleaning, calling friends and family to wish them l'shanah tovah, participating in services, admiring the blowing of the shofar, thinking about Israel and America and the new year, the evangelical Christians were on the march, literally and figuratively. The gushing by people like Inquirer columnist David Boldt, who make it seem as if this is the only, the best, the largest, etc., rally in the history of humankind, shows how little they recall of history.

If money is power, and power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and money is the root of all evil, then Alex Gibney's documentary about the superlobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff illustrates these cautionary koans with alarming, and damning, detail. A twisting tale of ambition, greed and hypocrisy, of moral lassitude and bold-faced chicanery, Casino Jack and the United States of Money focuses on the chameleonlike Abramoff, a charismatic mover and shaker who shook down American Indian tribes, Asian clothing factory owners and members of Congress, pocketing millions in the process.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Former Sen. Rick Santorum declared "a turning point in America" yesterday to a crowd of conservative Republican voters who help launch presidential elections from this early caucus state. Santorum preached to the flock on issues close to their political hearts, promising a battle against terrorism, abortion rights and same-sex marriage. That last issue has drawn true ire here since the Iowa Supreme Court last April declared a ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, clearing the way for Iowa to become the first state outside the Northeast to allow gays to marry.

If you're the sort who enjoys those giant jigsaw puzzles that consume consecutive summer vacations, have we got a scandal for you! Corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff may be the biggest piece of the puzzle, but there are scores of others that, once pieced together, form an almost cartoonish picture of extreme greed and corruption. Start with the characters, a surreal hodgepodge of caricature, including: el capo Abramoff, the gangster in too-tight overcoat and fedora striding from the courthouse; a variety of politicians and K Street lobbyists, all looking as if they just remembered they left a porn site up on their mother-in-law's computer; and, not to leave anyone out, American Indians - that most sacred of all American victim groups.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff was not at the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing last week, but he was the central topic, as Congress continued to probe what some call one of this generation's most outrageous political scandals. It was J. Steven Griles' turn to testify Wednesday, but it could have been any number of people. Griles, a former Interior Department deputy, was called to address suggestions that Abramoff had improperly influenced his federal work. Griles, who denies wrongdoing, is just the latest in a line of Republican officials and conservative leaders to be linked to Abramoff, who has been accused of mocking the laws that govern money and influence in American politics.

Perhaps the best case that can be made for Harriet Miers is the one President Bush made out of the gate: "I know her heart. I know what she believes. I know her well enough to be able to say that she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today. " Of course, the last person Bush judged by getting "a sense of his soul" was Vladimir Putin. Twenty years ago, Miers was giving money to Al Gore and the DNC, and a few years before that she was Catholic.

Whoop, whoop, whoop! Behold the happy warrior. The high-pitched laugh comes from down low in the wheelchair, where Max Cleland sits with his leg stumps, as he rants merrily about President Bush, gesturing wildly with his only arm, as rivulets of sweat streak across his blue dress shirt. Nearly 34 years after he was cleaved in half by a grenade in the heat of battle, he's storming into combat like a man on a mission, reborn after a bitter political defeat, determined to take Bush down for John Kerry, his Vietnam brother in arms.

Their interest and their influence fading, Christian conservatives are struggling to regain the power that not long ago helped Republicans elect a president and win control of Congress. Since Bill Clinton left the scene, Christians have retreated from elective politics, no longer stirred to anger by a president they abhorred, and frustrated by their inability to enact laws barring abortion and permitting school prayer. In 2000, an estimated four million Christian conservative voters sat out the election.

On the surface, it would not appear that anything is remotely amiss at the Christian Coalition. The group that has made itself synonymous with the religious right is celebrating its 10th birthday. Its founder and leader, Pat Robertson, is talking up plans to register a million new voters for the next national election. And today marks the beginning of its annual Washington "victory" conference - a glitzy affair that will feature speeches by five Republican presidential candidates, including Texas Gov. George W. Bush, all of them seemingly anxious to pay obeisance.

If Gov. Ridge is scuttling to the Right to win a spot on the national Republican ticket - and there's evidence he is - he'd better scuttle faster. Not only has he reportedly been bad-mouthed by one unnamed archbishop (as noted today in Clout on Page 8), there's also a sense in some GOP circles that the easier things go for presidential front-runner Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the tougher it could get for Ridge. Bush now looks like a runaway winner for the GOP nomination. But some GOP insiders say if conservative Republicans anxious about Bush's "compassionate conservative" views can't get a fight in the primary season, they will want a fight for VP. "With [conservative N.H. Sen.]

The Republican Party held its biggest meeting since the 1996 election here last weekend - a gathering of 1,600 grassroots activists from across the South. It showcased top congressional leaders and nearly a dozen aspirants for the 2000 ticket. Even more, it was a boisterous display of the forces that have catapulted Republicans into the driver's seat in Dixie and have made the South dominant in the national GOP. It also showed why Republicans aren't ready for prime time. I have been covering the biennial Southern Republican Leadership Conferences since the 1970s, when they attracted only a handful of people from each state - idealistic folks intent on bringing two-party competition and good-government reforms to courthouses and state capitols corrupted by decades of Democratic domination.