ARTICLES
June 2006 ARTICLES
Contents © 2006
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Not a Stunt
Catholic Presidential Candidate Takes the Back Roads
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
"Father, I'm running for president of the United States." The priest looked with some disbelief at the average-sized man with close-cropped hair, standing at the rectory door at near 11 at night. (He was looking for a place to park his van for the night.) "Now I've heard everything," said the priest, to this calling-card introduction.
Perhaps it was because the priest lived in Omaha; but I, who live in California, did not have the same reaction when first I heard Joe Schriner announce his candidacy to what is called the highest office in the land. I have heard stranger things than this in my day. Nevertheless, I had doubts probably similar to those of the Omaha cleric when the pastor of a little church in the Mojave desert announced after a Sunday Mass in March that a presidential candidate was to address us. Presidential candidate? I thought. It's not an election year. And then when I saw Joe Schriner behind the ambo, I thought, "Oh, a crank." A friend and I gave each other knowing looks across the aisle.
It was not so much what Schriner was saying -- he was addressing the evils of abortion and likening them to the Holocaust; or the fact that he had his daughter, sitting with her mother in the nave, read a prayer, I think, to the Immaculate Heart; it was that anyone like him would be running for president. This has to be a stunt, I thought, or the guy is off his rocker.
I even told my friend, as we sauntered over to the hall for coffee and doughnuts, to be sure not to tell this fellow that I worked on a newspaper. I noticed Schriner's wife coming from a conversion van (vintage early '70s, decorated with campaign slogans, such as "Average Joe," "GOT JOE?" and "White House or Bust" painted in white on the back window.) All went well in the hall, however; I didn't exactly avoid Schriner; he and his wife were talking to a couple while I drank my coffee and studiously tried to look the other direction. I did slip, though, and looking over in their direction, caught Mrs. Schriner's eye. With a smile she walked over to me. "Oh, damn," I thought.
I listened politely as she, in what sounded like an Australian accent (it was New Zealander), told me of her husband's campaign. It seems this was the third time he was running for president (he ran in 2000 and again in 2004); and as in a previous campaign (the first they conducted by bicycle in the Midwest), they were campaigning by driving their van conversion -- a one-ton, 1971 Dodge Xplorer -- down the back roads of the country, talking at parishes and other venues and researching the state of the country. I admit I was somewhat surprised to find Liz Schriner an intelligent, articulate woman, without a hint of crankiness. But when she said that she and Joe held to the complete Catholic social teaching, that they were on their way to the San Joaquin Valley to study farm worker conditions, and that they supported sustainable agriculture, I became interested. After a few minutes of conversation, I even volunteered that I edited a newspaper and might be interested in interviewing them.
So it was that the Schriners and their three children -- Sarah, Joseph, and Jonathan -- ended up eating dinner with my family at our home in Tehachapi, and that Joe and I, before dinner, sat and talked about his campaign and ideas. Joe Schriner, as I discovered, is not a crank, is not crazy; rather, belied by his average demeanor, he is a man of some depth of thought and feeling and a serious and faithful Catholic. And as for the unusual life he and his family lead -- well, there have been saints who have done stranger things.
But I did wonder why he was running for president. Was it a stunt to get people to think about certain things they might otherwise ignore? "No, it's not a stunt," he told me. "What we have done over the last seven years is go from place to place and accumulate a data base of people all around the country that we know we can mobilize to get petition signatures to get on the ballot if this becomes a national story with some staying power to it. Liz (my campaign manager) has sent to every state [for material] on how to get on the ballot."
The level of their seriousness can be seen in the fact that Schriners have worked up a number of position papers, many of them rather detailed, some still in the works, on issues ranging from war policy, abortion, and capital punishment to environmental issues, farming policy, taxation, and education. (One may read these position papers at www.voteforjoe.com.) These position papers represent "15 years of solid research," said Joe "We've done research in which we've gone out into the general populace and said, 'what's your take on this?' And as we found stuff that made sense, we developed these position papers. We went to the experts, but sometimes the common people have more expertise than the experts."
Schriner says his positions are drawn up in accord with Catholic social teaching -- though, admittedly, his positions reflect more the ideas of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day (with some Chesterton and Belloc thrown in) than of "conservative" or "liberal" Catholics. For instance, he is opposed to all abortion, euthanasia, and embyronic stem cell research; but he also opposes the death penalty. His military policy, though not pacifist, would include strict adherence to the Church's "just war" criteria and the U.S. taking the lead in nuclear disarmament. He would also establish a U.S. Department of Peace. While opposed to homosexual marriage (he calls homosexual acts "intrinsically disordered and opposed to Natural Law"), Schriner wants to help the natural family by promoting a "fair wage," encouraging stability in local communities (to promote extended, multi-generational families), and by community programs to help parents in "relationship building" and "healthy parenting." As part of healing families and individuals, Schriner believes Americans have to learn to live simply -- and this does not mean simply eating out less often. Schriner thinks Americans need make a "preferential option for the poor, comparing their lifestyles with people in abject poverty." As an example, even people "in modest homes could do house sharing" with others in need of shelter, where possible, and think of how to whittle down their expenses "so the poor can have the basics in adequate shelter." Americans, he said, should look to "cutting back on food consumption and spending to help the 55 percent [of people in the world] living on rice and a few beans. The same goes for clothes and the kind of vehicles they drive."
Schriner thinks that Catholic social teaching requires care for the natural world. Thus he would promote organic, sustainable farming, as well as a movement back to the family farm ("we've spent 13 years now," he said, "researching all these models to move the country back toward sustainability and small-scale farming.") He also favors the promotion of energy alternatives, including solar and wind-electric. As for the human world outside the United States, he would have justice as the hallmark of American policy, not national aggrandizement. He would promote third world debt forgiveness and foreign aid to help immigrants stay in their countries.
But Schriner does not favor an increase in federal power or, even, maintaining its current power. "We would work very strongly for redistribution of power in a major way," he said, "so that most of the power is back in the hands of local people at the local level." He said he sees the presidency as more of a bully pulpit, to point out to Americans things people across the country are already doing to solve problems and enhance community and family life.
How did "Average Joe Schriner" come to take the unusual step of travelling the country in an old conversion van, running for president? Up till about 1990, his life was not particularly unusual. A graduate from Ohio's Bowling Green State University in 1978 (with a bachelor's in journalism), Schriner had worked for a couple of newspapers in Ohio and had a private counseling practice in Cleveland doing drug, alcohol, and addictive family assistance. "I was doing that and actually doing rather well, and then -- the best way to put it -- is that I got a spiritual prompting to give that up and go out on the road," said Schriner. "In my discernment process, I went to some people I knew who were kind of spiritual, and the response was, in the Cleveland vernacular, 'what, are you nuts?' But then I went to a couple of people I really trusted spiritually, and I told them about what was happening and what I was doing, and some outward signs (just little things), and one of them said, 'well, if God wants you to do it, why don't you do it?' That started the journey."
That was in 1990. But Schriner told me he was not running for president. "The prompting was that I was sort of like Charles Kuralt for God -- I was to be on the road, and I would meet people, and I was just supposed to take notes, not knowing exactly why," he said. But as it started to unfold, after a few years, it started to become clear to me that what I was researching was a different kind of plan for the country, one that matched up with Catholic teaching. Because everything -- social justice, environmental stewardship, healing the family -- people are doing really wonderful projects to really shift the country, but they were happening sort of in a cacophony down below the surface. It was as if these other projects were prepared as models that could actually shift the country in a different direction. So what developed in my mind was that I could get a message out about these things with the hopes of planting seeds and starting to reorient the country. It was almost as if I was looking at pieces of a puzzle, that if you assemble them in each town and with just the right amount of synergy, you could dramatically shift the town. And because there have been so many miracles as this unfolded, I really felt as if God had His hand in this and that it might get bigger as time goes on. It wasn't like one epiphany moment, but it evolved over eight years, in the context of practicing the presence of God in the context of this."
During this period, from 1990 to 1998, Schriner not only traveled the country but, in 1992, married Liz. (They met in Alaska; he was doing his Kuralt thing and she was on an around-the-world tour.) Then, in '98, they settled in the little town of Ripley, Ohio. It was there, leading the "normal" life, that Schriner said he felt moved to arrange the "puzzle pieces" he had collected over eight years into a presidential platform. Giving up everything, Joe, Liz, and their two children went to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and formally announced his candidacy for president.
"I didn't know anything about the Liberty Bell," said Schriner, "I just thought it would be a good place to do it. There's a whole square there. Now, I sent out to the Philadelphia Enquirer, all the media, the television stations, the whole thing. When we pulled in -- it was a real sunny day, April 30, 1999 -- there were all these people milling about the Liberty Bell about 45 minutes before the talk. And I'm like, wow! I'm thinking the papers did a piece, in my naiveté. But when we walked out to the Liberty Bell, I noticed that there didn't seem to be much attention to me. (It turned out to be busloads of school children). Joseph was in a backpack on my back, drooling on my head (we didn't have anyone to watch the kids). A friend of ours from Bryn Mawr showed up at the talk; she was like 20 feet from me, and I was talking directly to her. Afterwards, she came up to me and said, 'you know what, Joe, I've actually heard a number of declaration speeches; this is the best one I've ever heard." And then she stops and says, 'you know what God says about a mustard seed? This is a mustard seed.'"
In the weeks following his Philadelphia debut, "we had events planned -- in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Washington, D.C. -- that resulted in nothing, absolutely nothing. No press, no anything," said Schriner. "It got so embarrassing in Wilmington -- by this time we had bought a little boom box thing with a microphone -- and I stood up in Rodney Square to speak. I set up the boom box thing by a bus stop. I talked to 32 people, though there were only two people after the bus showed up."
With this string of failures, Schriner said he told Liz, "either I really missed some sign, because nothing is working out, or...." But after a Mass they attended at a Carmelite monastery in Maryland, "a man walked up to me," Schriner continued, "and goes, 'you know, I heard what you're doing. Have you ever read the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I said, 'no I haven't.' And he said, 'you know, you should really read that,' and walked off. When we were in Wilmington, we stayed at someone's house. They had a bookshelf with about 12 books. Right in the middle was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I took it down; it is about a guy riding around the country with his son on a motorcycle. I only got to about page three, where it said, 'I thought it much more enjoyable to go down the back roads than on the main thoroughfare.' The words jumped up at me from the page."
Schriner said from this he got the idea that instead of seeking the big venues he and Liz should begin carrying their campaign down America's back roads (hence the title of Schriner's book, Back Road to the White House.) Following their Zen experience, Schriner said he and Liz "went down this back road and ended up in the little town of Rising Sun, Maryland, on the top of the Chesapeake Bay, population 2,000 at the most; and we ended up on the front page of the Rising Sun Herald. And then it just started to build and build and build, and now we go just quietly down the back roads of America. There have been a lot of big papers that have done stories on us, and a lot of stuff that's happened, but it seems like our base and what God wants for us the most is this back road journey. And all these things worked out, and we've met all these people -- I mean, how many presidential candidates come into Tehachapi?"
None, I had to admit. And few, if any, prospective first ladies would, in preparation for supper, be peeling and slicing hardboiled eggs with my wife in the kitchen. But, I wondered, other presidential candidates have enormous "war chests" to support their campaign. How do the Schriners do it? "We get donations, just like other candidates," he said. "We file with the Federal Elections Commission." But, he said, "it's such a tremendous faith walk -- to live by the evangelical counsels, to go out with only your staff, not taking anything else." Schriner said he receives help in the most uncanny ways, and when he most needs it -- someone will offer him a half a pizza or a bass (as happened in April near Bakersfield), someone else will volunteer to fix his van (for free), others will give him money, while others let them plug their van into their house sockets for the night. And often, he said, the people who help him "have a piece of information that was really germane to a platform position I was working on, something they had been working on for quite some time. In our vulnerability, we've met a tremendous number of people we would not otherwise have met."
I could not help but feel admiration for the Schriners; yet I had one nagging question in my mind. Does he think that by travelling back roads he can really win the presidency? I asked Joe this, and he agreed that it was certainly "pollyannish" to think "we can work this out, driving around the country in a little conversion van," and he could fully appreciate why anyone would think it "delusional." But, he told me, if God wants him to be president, God can make him president. "We really think that something's going to happen to spark this thing," he said, "and when it does, it will have a whole lot of staying power. If people get fed up with the system, wouldn't it be refreshing to have an average citizen as president? It almost sounds romantic enough where, if it caught on, it would have some staying power. There may be a bunch of precipitating factors where people get fed up, and then all of a sudden this would sound palatable. Now, whether that translates into winning, that's a whole other deal. But Liz and I still believe in miracles. We've watched so many of them happen. God could do this in a minute, but we have to bring our loaves and fishes."
And, if he doesn't win? Schriner said he would not be discouraged. By running for president he has been able to do some of what he would do as president -- spread the word about how people should live and what they can do "to make the country a better place." And, he said, what he is doing has a ripple effect, influencing far more people than he ever actually meets.
He told me he explained this to a graduate history class at Toledo University (an event described in his book, Back Road to the White House II.) Addressing the class, he was telling them about the projects people had initiated and how he was spreading the word of them across the country. And, said Schriner, "I told them, 'in the end, on a small scale, I 'm already president of the United States.' They all smiled politely." Afterwards, when he told Liz what he had said about being president, she looked at him, and in her ironic way expressed what had probably been in the minds of the graduate history students.
"You know," she said, "it's a happy little world you live in, isn't it?"