Marianne Williamson and the Power of the Word in her Candidacy for President

This is Part 4 of a multi-part series examining how we use the Power of the Word in politics, particularly in the 2020 presidential race.  Rev. Sara S. Nichols is senior minister at the Center for Spiritual Living, Davis and the Spiritual Director of All is Well Institute which supports and teaches people how to heal themselves using spiritual tools.  Trained as an attorney, before coming to spiritual science, she was a legislative and communications advocate for Medicare for All and other consumer issues in Congress and the California legislature.

Part 1 -- What exactly is the Power of the Word and How does it Work in Politics?

Part 2 -- Donald Trump and the Power of the Word

Part 3 -- Bernie Sanders and the Power of the Word
Part 4 --Marianne Williamson and the Power of the Word

Part 5 --Pete Buttigieg and the Power of the Word

Part 6 --Comparison of Top 2020 Presidential Candidates

In this series, we confine ourselves primarily to the question of how effectively does the candidate work with the power of their word.  In other words, given how they marshall universal law to their favor through the power of the word, how much do they appear to be grounded in a vision of a world that works for everyone, how likely are they to win, and when they assume the White House, what are they likely to accomplish?

My assumption is that every Democratic challenger for president shares most of the same policy positions (affordable universal health care and education, pro civil rights, combat climate change, raise the minimum wage, pro gun control).  There are plenty of other writers out there that will spend their time evaluating the nuances of where Democratic candidates for president are on these issues. And most news forums will spend their time looking at the experience, the demographics and the charisma of the candidates, all of which play a role in whether they will win.

Before we get into analysis let's rate Williamson on the criteria that I'm looking at. Williamson is currently tied with Sanders and Buttigieg on my rankings for ability to win the presidency based on use of power of word and second only to Sanders on likelihood to govern from shared values of integrity, love diversity and inclusion, accountability and caring. Note that Warren scores absolutely top points for grounding her vision in a World that Works for Everyone and in likelihood to govern from these values but falls well short on use of her word to win. Contrast that with the incumbent president who has top ranks on use of the power of the word to win and zeros for grounding his word in a World that Works for Everyone or shared values. In the total chart, Sanders is the top. :

Scale of 1 - 10 10 being the best

• Williamson effective Use of Power of her Word -- 9
• Williamson potential use of her word to win the nomination and presidency -- 7
• Williamson likelihood of governing based on a World that Works for Everyone upon assuming presidency -- 8 . It's not that I don't believe her but I think that I don't believe her but I think that her lack of experience may make that harder to actually pull off.
• Williamson grounding her Word in love, integrity, diversity and inclusion, accountability, caring --10

How Williamson stacks up against other contenders:

For More on this see: Comparison of 2020 Presidential Candidates

In this piece I evaluate how Marianne Williamson, one of two major candidates for the Democratic party nomination for president who is not an elected official (the other is tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang), uses the power of her word.   (Lest you write her off, Politico says she is one of 18 candidates that has already qualified for the debates as of this writing.)   As a student of new thought spirituality, I have, of course, known of bestselling author and speaker Marianne Williamson for years.  Almost everyone has encountered her most famous quote on calendars and posters throughout the world, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…”

Her stated reasons for running for president echo that quote, “Our deepest political problems are expressed on the level of politics, but they are not rooted there. Our deepest problem is the disengagement of the American heart from the values we purport to hold most dear, and the failure of too many of our citizens to vitally participate in the expression of those values... I believe I have expertise and skill [to facilitate a transformation] that is most needed at this time.”

Unlike other candidates, Williamson explicitly and consciously sees the need for moral leadership and awakening.   The quotes on her campaign website underscore that:

"The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That's the least of it....It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership."   

Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives." Martin Luther King, Jr.  

If I had to guess, I’d say Williamson is less focussed on becoming president than she is in facilitating that leadership and engagement, a worthy goal.  As a writer, Williamson chooses her words carefully and well. She steps strongly into moral leadership and the power of her word when she describes her thinking overall.  On the question of why we might not want an elected official at this time, she says

“What we most need now is a political visionary -- someone with a deep understanding of where we have been and where we need to be going. While car mechanics are important, they aren't necessarily the ones who know how to drive you to where you want to go. It is unreasonable to expect the mindset that drove us into the ditch to be able to pull us out of it. It's not enough now to just know what's happening inside Washington; we need someone who also knows what's happening inside us.”

In describing her positions on the issues, she is at her strongest on the need for racial reconciliation and healing, LGBTQ rights and immigration.  

On racial reconciliation Marianne Williamson demands reparations from slavery to heal the nation as a whole. Williamson has been calling for reparations since 2015, likely picking up on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ call in the Atlantic magazine the year before. She powerfully lays out the case for reparation as a spiritual amends to a nation still suffering from its effects.

“Tepid solutions are not enough for the times in which we live; we need huge, strategized acts of righteousness, now. Just as Germany has paid $89 Billion in reparations to Jewish organizations since WW2, the United States should pay reparations for slavery. A debt unpaid is still a debt unpaid, even if it’s 150 years later. The legacy of that injustice lives on, with racist policies infused into our systems even to this day...America has not yet completed the task of healing our racial divide.”

On LGBTQ rights, she says

“Our Declaration of Independence holds that the inalienable rights of, "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," are endowed to ALL humans by their creator at birth. In 2015, marriage equality became the law of the land, yet there is still no federal law explicitly protecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities from discrimination. These communities, therefore, do not enjoy the full breadth of freedoms that this country espouses to guarantee to each and every citizen. This is not only unacceptable; this is in direct violation of our founding principles.”

On immigration,

“Immigrants are not our enemies. I don’t know any progressive who is arguing for open borders, but we are arguing for open hearts. This is so important to remember today as immigrants are often viciously scapegoated. Scapegoating immigrants... is a deliberate dehumanization technique. Dehumanizing others has always been the required first step leading toward history’s collective atrocities. This is not the first time dehumanization has reared its head in our nation, and we must stand up against it now as other generations stood up against it in their time.”

With the environment she quotes Sir Robert Swan inspiringly “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it,”  she offers little else other than a similar plan to combat climate change as other Democratic candidates.

On healthcare although she seems particularly interested in the environmental and dietary causes of illness, she leaves it to Bernie Sanders to exercise the moral leadership.   “Healthcare is a (h)uman right” is something he has been repeating for decades. She sticks to a solid Medicare for All policy position without fully articulating her moral criteria for it.

The fact that Williamson strongly articulates her thoughts on race, immigration and LGBTQ rights, and overall moral leadership and the economy, without seeming to exercise the same leadership in healthcare and the environment strengthens my conclusion that she is in this race to add to the debate rather than to win the presidency.

You could probably swap out the term “moral leadership” for “successful use of the power of the word.”  However, remember that it depends on what morals you have, and what your goals are in using either term or strategy.  In Donald Trump and the Power of the Word we saw how the he has very effectively used the power of the word to gain and retain power, regardless of who he harms in the bargain.  Many “moral leaders” have done the same--think anyone who has waged war in the name of God or being “right.”

So I always am interested in whether the person is using their word to generate a world that works for everyone, rather than themselves or a particular sect or subgroup.  I believe Marianne Williamson has that goal. I look forward to seeing what her participation the debates will bring.