Alan Keyes (born August 7, 1950) is an American political activist, author and former diplomat. He ran for President of the United States in 1996 and 2000 and for the U.S. Senate in 1988, 1992, and 2004 as a Republican. He is currently an announced candidate in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.

Keyes served in the U.S. Foreign Service, was appointed Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations under President Ronald Reagan, and served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987.

He currently lives with his family in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Born in a naval hospital on Long Island in New York, Keyes was the fifth child to Allison and Gerthina Keyes, a U.S. Army sergeant and a teacher. Due to his father’s tours of duty, the Keyes family traveled frequently. Keyes lived in Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia and overseas in Italy.

After graduation from high school, Keyes attended Cornell University, where he was a member of the Cornell University Glee Club and The Hangovers. He studied political philosophy with American philosopher and essayist Allan Bloom and has said that Bloom was the professor who influenced him most in his undergraduate studies. Later, Keyes received death threats and left the school, spending a year in Paris under a Cornell study abroad program connected with Bloom. A passage of Bloom’s book, “The Closing of the American Mind”, refers to an African American student that may have been Keyes “whose life had been threatened by a black faculty member when the student refused to participate in a demonstration” at Cornell. Invited to continue his studies at Harvard University, where he resided in Winthrop House, Keyes completed his B.A. degree in government affairs in 1972. During his first year of graduate school, Keyes’s roommate was Bill Kristol, who later ran Keyes’ unsuccessful 1988 U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland. He received his PhD in government affairs from Harvard University in 1979, writing his dissertation on Alexander Hamilton and constitutional theory under Harvey C. Mansfield. Due to student deferments and a high draft number, Keyes was not drafted to serve in Vietnam. Keyes and his family were staunch supporters of the war in Vietnam, where his father served two tours of duty. Keyes was criticized by those who opposed the war in Vietnam, but he says he was supporting his father and his brothers, who were also fighting in that war.

Keyes is married to Jocelyn Marcel Keyes, an Indian American from Calcutta, whom he met during his service in Bombay. The couple have three children - Francis, Maya, and Andrew. Keyes is a third degree Knight of Columbus and his family is devoutly Catholic.

Keyes is a trained opera singer. He is also a descendent of slaves and wrote a book on the problems affecting black America called “Masters of the Dream: The Strength and Betrayal of Black America.” His favorite television program is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He once said about Star Trek, “There’s something basically clean and decent and all-American about the respect for human dignity that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry showed.”

A year before completing his doctoral studies, Keyes joined the United States Department of State as a protégé of UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Keyes viewed Kirkpatrick as a mentor. In 1979, he was assigned to the consulate in Mumbai, India, where as a desk officer he met his wife Jocelyn. The following year, Keyes was sent to serve at the embassy in Zimbabwe. He settled in Washington, DC in 1981 as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan appointed Keyes to the United Nations with the full rank of ambassador. He remained as an ambassador to the UN until 1985, when he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, a position he held until 1987. His stay at the UN provoked some controversy, leading Newsday to say “he has propounded the more unpopular aspects of US policy with all the diplomatic subtlety of the cannon burst in Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture.’” He also served on the National Security Council staff and had duties over counter-terrorism.

At a fundraiser for Keyes’ Senate campaign, President Reagan spoke of Keyes’ time as an ambassador, saying that he “did such an extraordinary job … defending our country against the forces of anti-Americanism.” Reagan continued, “I’ve never known a more stout-hearted defender of a strong America than Alan Keyes.”

Following government service, Ambassador Keyes was President of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) from 1989 to 1991, and founded CAGW’s National Taxpayers’ Action Day. In 1991, he served as Interim President of Alabama A&M University, in Huntsville, Alabama.

Keyes was appointed as resident scholar for the American Enterprise Institute in 1987. His principal research for AEI was diplomacy, international relations, and self-government.

Among the U.S. delegation to the 1984 World Population Conference in Mexico City, Keyes was selected by Reagan as deputy chairman. In that capacity, Keyes negotiated the language of the Mexico City Policy to withhold federal funds from international organizations that support abortion. Additionally, Keyes fought an Arab-backed resolution at the conference that condemned Israeli settlements. The measure passed 83-2, with only Israel and the U.S. voting against it.

Reagan again appointed Keyes to represent the U.S. in the 1985 Women’s Conference in Nairobi.

During his time at the State Department, Keyes defended the Reagan policy opposing the imposition of economic sanctions on South Africa as punishment for apartheid. Stated Keyes, “I see the black people in South Africa as the most critical positive factor for eliminating apartheid and building the future of that country. . . . And that is not something you do with rhetoric, slogans and noninvolvement. It’s not something you will achieve through disinvestment.”

Maryland Senate campaign 1988 and 1992

In 1988, Keyes was drafted by the Maryland Republican Party to run for the United States Senate, and received 38% of the vote against incumbent Democrat Paul Sarbanes. Four years later, he ran again for the Senate from Maryland, coming in first in a field of 13 candidates in the Republican primary. Against Democrat Barbara Mikulski, he received 29% in the general election.

U.S. Presidential election campaign 1996

Keyes sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, in an effort to force abortion to the center of America’s public policy debate. Many Republican leaders saw this as unnecessary and divisive.

During the 1996 Republican primaries, Keyes was briefly detained by Atlanta police when he tried to participate in a debate from which he had been excluded.

U.S. Presidential election campaign 2000

Keyes again campaigned for the Republican nomination in the 2000 primaries – on a pro-life, pro-family, tax-reform platform.[24] In Iowa he finished 3rd, drawing 14% in a crowded field. He stayed in the race after the early rounds and debated the two remaining candidates, John McCain and George W. Bush, in a number of nationally-televised debates. Commentators on Fox News Channel and MSNBC went as far as declaring Keyes the winner of the debates. His best showing in the presidential primaries was in Utah, where he received 21% of the vote. In one memorable incident, Keyes jumped into a mosh pit of youths body-surfing to the music of Rage Against the Machine, in a challenge by Michael Moore’s television show The Awful Truth – and at the urging of his daughter. Said Keyes, “They had this moveable mosh pit with people in it … and they were challenging folks to sort of take a dive into the mosh pit. And I did not even know what it was, to tell you the truth, to show you how lacking I am in knowledge of the times. But my daughter and my wife understood, and there I was, trying to decide. The security guy, who goes around with me, you should have seen his face. He was definitely not pleased.” The incident was a colorful talking point of the 2000 Republican primaries.

Illinois Senate campaign 2004

On August 8, 2004 – with 86 days to go before the general election – the Illinois Republican Party drafted Alan Keyes to run against Democrat Barack Obama for the U.S. Senate, after the Republican nominee, Jack Ryan, withdrew due to a sex scandal, and other potential draftees (most notably former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka) declined to run. Keyes was called a “carpetbagger” in the media, since he “had never lived in Illinois.” When asked to answer charges of carpetbagging in the context of his earlier criticism of Hillary Clinton, he called her campaign “pure and planned selfish ambition”, but stated that in his case he felt a moral obligation to run after being asked to by the state GOP. “You are doing what you believe to be required by your respect for God’s will, and I think that that’s what I’m doing in Illinois”.

Keyes drew criticism when he commented that Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama, in view of some of Obama’s positions, including his refusal to support the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which would grant enhanced legal protection to infants born alive after a failed abortion procedure. Jon Stewart in making fun of his comment said that while Jesus would not vote for Obama, its hard to say what he would do if his only other choice was Alan Keyes. After the election, Keyes declined to congratulate Obama, explaining that his refusal to congratulate Obama was “not anything personal,” but was meant to make a statement against “extend[ing] false congratulations to the triumph of what we have declared to be across the line” of reasonable propriety. He said that Obama’s position on moral issues regarding life and the family had crossed that line. “I’m supposed to make a call that represents the congratulations toward the triumph of that which I believe ultimately stands for … a culture evil enough to destroy the very soul and heart of my country? I cannot do this. And I will not make a false gesture,” Keyes said.[35]

Keyes was also criticized for his views on homosexuality. In an interview with Michelangelo Signorile, a gay radio host, Keyes defined homosexuality as centering in the pursuit of pleasure, literally “selfish hedonism.” When Signorile asked if Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney’s avowed lesbian daughter, fit the description and was therefore a “selfish hedonist,” Keyes replied, “Of course she is. That goes by definition.” Media sources picked up on the exchange, claiming that Keyes had “trashed,” “attacked,” and “lashed out at” Mary Cheney, and had called her a “sinner” – provoking condemnation of Keyes by gay Republicans and several GOP leaders. Keyes noted that it was an interviewer, not he, who brought up Mary Cheney’s name in the above incident, and he told reporters, “You have tried to personalize the discussion of an issue that I did not personalize. The people asking me the question did so, and if that’s inappropriate, blame the media. Do not blame me.”

During the campaign, Keyes outlined an alternative to reparations for slavery. His specific suggestion was that, for a period of one or two generations, African-Americans who were descended from slaves would be exempt from the federal income tax (though not from the FICA tax that supports Social Security). Keyes said the experiment “would become a demonstration project for what I believe needs to be done for the whole country, which is to get rid of the income tax.”

Keyes finished with 27% of the vote. By the end of the race, many Republicans had refused to support Keyes or were actively supporting Obama.

U.S. Presidential election campaign 2008

On June 5, 2007, a group called We Need Alan Keyes for President formed a political action committee to encourage Keyes to enter the 2008 United States Presidential Election. On September 14, 2007, Keyes officially announced his candidacy in an interview with radio show host Janet Parshall.

On September 17, 2007, Keyes participated in the Values Voter Debate streamed live on Skyangel, the Values Voter website, and radio. In a straw poll of the attending audience, Keyes placed third among the invited candidates, after Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul.

Keyes has done much and varied work as a media commentator and talk show personality. In 1994, he began hosting a syndicated radio show called The Alan Keyes Show: America’s Wake-Up Call from Arlington, Virginia. The show became simulcast on cable in 1997. Keyes also launched various web-based organizations - notably RenewAmerica and the Declaration Foundation, both headquartered in Washington, DC.

In 2002, he hosted a live television commentary show, Alan Keyes is Making Sense, on the MSNBC cable news channel. The network claimed poor ratings as the official reason for the show’s demise. However, MSNBC itself highlighted the show’s broadening audience and increasing ratings up until June 10, less than one month before cancellation. The cancellation triggered a currently ongoing boycott that numbers 78,137 members.

The show was unsympathetic to supporters of the al-Aqsa Intifadah – whom Keyes frequently debated on the program – and supported Israeli crackdown on Palestinians. The show also featured critical discussion of homosexuality and of priests accused in the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. The last episode was broadcast on June 27, 2002. In its brief run, Making Sense received ratings comparable to MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, the eventual successor to Keyes’ show.

As a result of Keyes’ strong advocacy of Israel on his MSNBC show, in July 2002 the state of Israel awarded him a special honor “in appreciation of his journalistic endeavors and his integrity in reporting” and flew him to meet Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, as well as spend four days touring Israeli military installations.

In August 2003, Keyes came out in defense of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, citing both the U.S. Constitution and the Alabama constitution as sanctioning Moore’s (and Alabama’s) authority to publicly display the Ten Commandments in the state’s judicial building, in defiance of a court order from U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson. Although the monument was ultimately removed by state authorities, the issue impelled Keyes to spend the next year advocating his understanding of the Constitution’s protection of the right of states to display monuments that reflect the religious sentiments of the people in their states. As a result, he published an essay describing his rationale titled “On the establishment of religion: What the Constitution really says.”

In early 2005, Keyes sought to intervene in the battle over the life of Terri Schiavo, arguing that Terri’s life was protected by the Florida constitution, and that Gov. Jeb Bush had final authority to determine the outcome of the case under state provisions. He attempted to meet with Gov. Bush to discuss the provisions of Florida law that authorized the governor to order Schiavo’s feeding tubes reinserted – something Bush claimed he wished to do, but said he lacked authority – but the governor declined to meet with Keyes. Keyes subsequently wrote an essay directed openly at Gov. Bush titled “Judicial review and executive responsibility”, days after Schiavo’s feeding tube had been removed.

In November 2006, Keyes criticized Gov. Mitt Romney for instituting gay marriage entirely on his own – according to Keyes – with no requirement or authority to do so under Massachusetts law. Keyes said Romney’s actions, which he suggested were due to a complete misunderstanding of his role as governor and of the limitations of the judicial branch of government, were not necessitated by a ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in November 2003 that directed the state legislature to institute same-sex marriage. Commenting on the issue, Keyes asked rhetorically, “Since the legislature has not acted on the subject, you might be wondering how it is that homosexuals are being married in Massachusetts. It’s because Mitt Romney, who is telling people he’s an opponent of same-sex marriage, forced the justices of the peace and others to perform same-sex marriage, all on his own, with no authorization or requirement from the court. Tells you how twisted our politicians have become.”

Keyes currently serves on the Board of Advisors for the Catholic League.

Official Site: www.alankeyes.com

Official PAC: Renew America

Biography Source: Wikipedia