51�Թ�

These political hacks are modern versions of Sinclair Lewis's slick con artist Elmer Gantry, cynically betraying a gullible public to amass personal power and wealth.

If Elmer Gantry was the Elijah, Armstrong’s the ‘Christ’ of religious hucksters.

Leave aside the worst-case scenarios — a scoundrel in the mold of the fictional Elmer Gantry or the real-life Jim Bakker — the pulpit is filled with perils for even the best-intentioned.

In the 1920s he published not only “Main Street” and “Babbitt” but three other novels that won comparable acclaim: “Arrowsmith,” about an idealistic young doctor-scientist; “Elmer Gantry,” a scathing satirical account of evangelism and religion in America — the top fiction best seller of 1927; and “Dodsworth,” about a retired American businessman searching abroad for what he senses he’s missed out on in his life — to me, his best-written and most affecting book and, later, the basis of William Wyler’s brilliant film.

He is one part Elmer Gantry, and one part Ned Racine.