For political reporters and politicians, the news that Dr. James Dobson died on Thursday dealt a jolt. Dobson, founder of pro-family organization Focus on the Family, played a starring role in the molding of evangelical conservatism into a potent political force.
But Dobson, who was 89 at the time of his death, had been relatively quiet and removed from politics for nearly two decades. He did weigh in strongly for Donald Trump in 2016 — maintaining that the Republican nominee’s commitment to naming pro-life justices to the Supreme Court transcended any doubts that values voters may have had about his multiple trips to the altar and other personal issues.
But political statements such as this had been increasingly few and far between for Jim Dobson, and a far cry from the 1990s and early 20th century. As longtime conservative leader Richard Viguerie recalled to Newsmax, “Dr. Dobson’s death marks the last of the big three Religious Right leaders — Jerry Falwell [of the Moral Majority], Pat Robertson [of the Christian Coalition], and James Dobson. He didn’t get as much publicity or notoriety as Falwell or Robertson, but he was equally indispensable in bringing traditional moral values to the political arena.”
Viguerie also noted that “Dr. Dobson’s leadership was critical to the success of the modern conservative movement and the Republican Party in recent decades.”
A bestselling Christian author and popular fixture on radio, in which he talked about the needs for discipline of children and criticized absentee fathers, Dobson built a nationwide following. When he founded Focus on the Family in 1977, he quickly oversaw a media empire with 10 radio stations, 11 magazines, and an annual budget of $100 million. Clearly, Dobson was someone with a following.
When President Jimmy Carter announced a White House Conference on Families in 1979 that included “diversity of families,” Dobson — who believed fathers should be breadwinners and mothers should be caregivers — was furious. More than 80,000 of his listeners wrote the White House demanding he be invited to the conference, which he eventually was.
Like Robertson and Falwell, Dobson backed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980 and enjoyed a cordial relationship with the 40th president and his administration. In addition, Dobson helped found the Family Research Council to lobby for cultural causes such as the pro-life movement and opposition to same-sex marriage. In Donald Trump’s Republican Party, the pro-life issue remains a potent one, but gay marriage is far more accepted by Republicans than it was 40 years ago.
In 1994, Dobson’s supporters joined with other pro-family advocates to give the GOP its first majority in the House and Senate in four decades. Two years later, they were pivotal players in maintaining the party’s pro-life plank at their San Diego convention.
But in February 1998, Dobson was growing disenchanted with the Republican agenda. At a closed-door meeting of the conservative Council for National Policy in Arizona, Dobson delivered what was called a “secret speech” focusing on his disappointment with the GOP majority in Congress for its failure to enact pro-family legislation. He strongly warned that if Republicans continued to “betray” evangelical conservatives, they would leave the party and he would “do whatever I can to take as many people with me as possible.”
The speech made many party chieftains nervous. Texas Gov. George W. Bush began the cultivation of Dobson and other leaders, and the Focus on the Family leader became an early supporter of his. In 2004, Dobson and other pro-family leaders were boosters of a constitutional amendment in Ohio to declare marriage as a union between a man and a woman. It passed resoundingly and inarguably helped Bush eke out a win in the Buckeye State over Democrat John Kerry and give him the electoral votes he needed to be reelected.
Upon first hearing of Dobson, many thought the doctorate implied he was a theologian or pastor. In truth, he was a practicing psychologist, with an undergraduate degree from the Point Loma Nazarene University (formerly Pasadena College) and a doctorate from the University of Southern California. For 14 years, he taught as an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at USC’s School of Medicine. It was the counterculture of the 1960s and breakdown of discipline in families, he later said, that led him to his pro-family mission.
Dobson was also an athlete. He was captain of his college’s tennis team and also a basketball enthusiast. Dobson was playing a pickup basketball game in 1988 with Pete Maravich when the Hall of Famer collapsed and died of a heart attack at age 40. Dobson subsequently delivered a stirring eulogy of Maravich at a funeral attended by a throng of NBA stars.
“Jim Dobson influenced child-rearing and family practices as much as Benjamin Spock did in the post-World War II period,” Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition told Newsmax. “He also played an historic role in encouraging evangelicals and conservative Christians to engage in public policy and politics and did so with a daily radio audience in the millions. Now that we have entered an era of disaggregated media, we may never see another like him.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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