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- ''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them.
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''...
That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about with George W. Bush. That's impossible now, he says. He is no longer invited to the White House. ''Faith can cut in so many ways,'' he said. ''If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness -- that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There's no reflection.
''Where people often get lost is on this very point,'' he said after a moment of thought. ''Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not -- not ever -- to the thing we as humans so very much want.''
And what is that?
''Easy certainty.''
Complete Article
Without a Doubt
October 17, 2004
By RON SUSKIND
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan
and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told
me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war
in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of
that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same
as the one raging across much of the world: a battle
between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and
true believers, reason and religion.
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a
light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to
Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this
sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has
told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and
self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a
champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's
governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is
so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist
enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be
persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark
vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. .
. .
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him
with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He
truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith
like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing
about faith is to believe things for which there is no
empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you
can't run the world on faith.''
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in
March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest
speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the
president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we
swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the
president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing
problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and
Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems
securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked
at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the
right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I
finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you
don't know the facts?'''
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the
senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My
instincts.''
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the
room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts
aren't good enough!'''
The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying
to make sense of the same thing -- a president who has been
an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability,
opacity and action.
But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect.
The
Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top
deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill,
Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals
fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they
requested explanations for many of the president's
decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with
accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on
his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state,
and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a
deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune
that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to
trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President
George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the
energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory --
believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in
the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the
discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time,
the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry
put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.''
What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in
the temporal realm of informed consent?
All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty
and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and
faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country
and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the
personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But
faith has also shaped his presidency in profound,
nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning
faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and
his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a
decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral
position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness.
The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were
surprised to see in the first presidential debate are
familiar expressions to those in the administration or in
Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his
positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce;
Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased,
and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility
-- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that
has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for
public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the
White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that
she announced her resignation as administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if
there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I
was accused of disloyalty!'' (Whitman, whose faith in Bush
has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is
now a leader of the president's re-election effort in New
Jersey.)
The nation's founders, smarting still from the punitive
pieties of Europe's state religions, were adamant about
erecting a wall between organized religion and political
authority. But suddenly, that seems like a long time ago.
George W. Bush -- both captive and creator of this moment
-- has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself. He
has created the faith-based presidency.
The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model
that has been enormously effective at, among other things,
keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White
House a kind of state secret. The dome of silence cracked a
bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations from
the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also,
in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul
O'Neill. When I quoted O'Neill saying that Bush was like
''a blind man in a room full of deaf people,'' this did not
endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin to
ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar
impressions and anecdotes about Bush's faith and certainty.
These are among the sources I relied upon for this
article.
Few were willing to talk on the record. Some were willing
to talk because they said they thought George W. Bush might
lose; others, out of fear of what might transpire if he
wins. In either case, there seems to be a growing silence
fatigue -- public servants, some with vast experience, who
feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era
children, seen but not heard, and are tired of it. But
silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White
House. After many requests, Dan Bartlett, the White House
communications director, said in a letter that the
president and those around him would not be cooperating
with this article in any way.
Some officials, elected or otherwise, with whom I have
spoken with left meetings in the Oval Office concerned that
the president was struggling with the demands of the job.
Others focused on Bush's substantial interpersonal gifts as
a compensation for his perceived lack of broader
capabilities. Still others, like Senator Carl Levin of
Michigan, a Democrat, are worried about something other
than his native intelligence. ''He's plenty smart enough to
do the job,'' Levin said. ''It's his lack of curiosity
about complex issues which troubles me.'' But more than
anything else, I heard expressions of awe at the
president's preternatural certainty and wonderment about
its source.
There is one story about Bush's particular brand of
certainty I am able to piece together and tell for the
record.
In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with
a few ranking senators and members of the House, both
Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high
hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the
Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and
the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about
countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The
problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European
countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were
not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One
congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat
from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress
-- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed
more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the
president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate
to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about
25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several
people in the room recall.
''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush
said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly
reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said
Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically
neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a
gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national
guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no
army.''
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses
gathered with administration officials and other
dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The
president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. ''You
were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does have an
army.''
This story was told to me by one of the senators in the
Oval Office that December day, Joe Biden. Lantos, a liberal
Democrat, would not comment about it. In general, people
who meet with Bush will not discuss their encounters.
(Lantos, through a spokesman, says it is a longstanding
policy of his not to discuss Oval Office meetings.)
This is one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open
dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of
inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which
undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in
the decision-maker and, just as important, by the
decision-maker. Nothing could be more vital, whether
staying on message with the voters or the terrorists or a
California congressman in a meeting about one of the
world's most nagging problems. As Bush himself has said any
number of times on the campaign trail, ''By remaining
resolute and firm and strong, this world will be
peaceful.''
He didn't always talk this way. A precious glimpse of Bush,
just as he was ascending to the presidency, comes from Jim
Wallis, a man with the added advantage of having deep
acuity about the struggles between fact and faith. Wallis,
an evangelical pastor who for 30 years has run the
Sojourners -- a progressive organization of advocates for
social justice -- was asked during the transition to help
pull together a diverse group of members of the clergy to
talk about faith and poverty with the new president-elect.
In December 2000, Bush sat in the classroom of a Baptist
church in Austin, Tex., with 30 or so clergy members and
asked, ''How do I speak to the soul of the nation?'' He
listened as each guest articulated a vision of what might
be. The afternoon hours passed. No one wanted to leave.
People rose from their chairs and wandered the room,
huddling in groups, conversing passionately. In one
cluster, Bush and Wallis talked of their journeys.
''I've never lived around poor people,'' Wallis remembers
Bush saying. ''I don't know what they think. I really don't
know what they think. I'm a white Republican guy who
doesn't get it. How do I get it?''
Wallis recalls replying, ''You need to listen to the poor
and those who live and work with poor people.''
Bush called over his speechwriter, Michael Gerson, and
said, ''I want you to hear this.'' A month later, an almost
identical line -- ''many in our country do not know the
pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do'' --
ended up in the inaugural address.
That was an earlier Bush, one rather more open and
conversant, matching his impulsiveness with a can-do
attitude and seemingly unafraid of engaging with a diverse
group. The president has an array of interpersonal gifts
that fit well with this fearlessness -- a headlong,
unalloyed quality, best suited to ranging among different
types of people, searching for the outlines of what will
take shape as principles.
Yet this strong suit, an improvisational gift, has long
been forced to wrestle with its ''left brain'' opposite --
a struggle, across 30 years, with the critical and
analytical skills so prized in America's professional
class. In terms of intellectual faculties, that has been
the ongoing battle for this talented man, first visible
during the lackluster years at Yale and five years of drift
through his 20's -- a time when peers were busy building
credentials in law, b
usiness or medicine.
Biden, who early on became disenchanted with Bush's grasp
of foreign-policy issues and is among John Kerry's closest
Senate friends, has spent a lot of time trying to size up
the president. ''Most successful people are good at
identifying, very early, their strengths and weaknesses, at
knowing themselves,'' he told me not long ago. ''For most
of us average Joes, that meant we've relied on strengths
but had to work on our weakness -- to lift them to adequacy
-- otherwise they might bring us down. I don't think the
president really had to do that, because he always had
someone there -- his family or friends -- to bail him out.
I don't think, on balance, that has served him well for the
moment he's in now as president. He never seems to have
worked on his weaknesses.''
Bush has been called the C.E.O. president, but that's just
a catch phrase -- he never ran anything of consequence in
the private sector. The M.B.A. president would be more
accurate: he did, after all, graduate from Harvard Business
School. And some who have worked under him in the White
House and know about business have spotted a strange
business-school time warp. It's as if a 1975 graduate from
H.B.S. -- one who had little chance to season theory with
practice during the past few decades of change in corporate
America -- has simply been dropped into the most
challenging management job in the world.
One aspect of the H.B.S. method, with its emphasis on
problems of actual corporations, is sometimes referred to
as the ''case cracker'' problem. The case studies are
static, generally a snapshot of a troubled company, frozen
in time; the various ''solutions'' students proffer, and
then defend in class against tough questioning, tend to
have very short shelf lives. They promote rigidity,
inappropriate surety. This is something H.B.S. graduates,
most of whom land at large or midsize firms, learn in their
first few years in business. They discover, often to their
surprise, that the world is dynamic, it flows and changes,
often for no good reason. The key is flexibility, rather
than sticking to your guns in a debate, and constant
reassessment of shifting realities. In short, thoughtful
second-guessing.
George W. Bush, who went off to Texas to be an oil
wildcatter, never had a chance to learn these lessons about
the power of nuanced, fact-based analysis. The small oil
companies he ran tended to lose money; much of their value
was as tax shelters. (The investors were often friends of
his father's.) Later, with the Texas Rangers baseball team,
he would act as an able front man but never really as a
boss.
Instead of learning the limitations of his Harvard
training, what George W. Bush learned instead during these
fitful years were lessons about faith and its particular
efficacy. It was in 1985, around the time of his 39th
birthday, George W. Bush says, that his life took a sharp
turn toward salvation. At that point he was drinking, his
marriage was on the rocks, his career was listless. Several
accounts have emerged from those close to Bush about a
faith ''intervention'' of sorts at the Kennebunkport family
compound that year. Details vary, but here's the gist of
what I understand took place. George W., drunk at a party,
crudely insulted a friend of his mother's. George senior
and Barbara blew up. Words were exchanged along the lines
of something having to be done. George senior, then the
vice president, dialed up his friend, Billy Graham, who
came to the compound and spent several days with George W.
in probing exchanges and walks on the beach. George W. was
soon born again. He stopped drinking, attended Bible study
and wrestled with issues of fervent faith. A man who was
lost was saved.
His marriage may have been repaired by the power of faith,
but faith was clearly having little impact on his broken
career. Faith heals the heart and the spirit, but it
doesn't do much for analytical skills. In 1990, a few years
after receiving salvation, Bush was still bumping along.
Much is apparent from one of the few instances of
disinterested testimony to come from this period. It is the
voice of David Rubenstein, managing director and cofounder
of the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm
that is one of the town's most powerful institutions and a
longtime business home for the president's father. In 1989,
the catering division of Marriott was taken private and
established as Caterair by a group of Carlyle investors.
Several old-guard Republicans, including the former Nixon
aide Fred Malek, were involved.
Rubenstein described that time to a convention of pension
managers in Los Angeles last year, recalling that Malek
approached him and said: ''There is a guy who would like to
be on the board. He's kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs
a job. . . . Needs some board positions.'' Though
Rubenstein didn't think George W. Bush, then in his
mid-40's, ''added much value,'' he put him on the Caterair
board. ''Came to all the meetings,'' Rubenstein told the
conventioneers. ''Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean
ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about
three years: 'You know, I'm not sure this is really for
you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't
think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't
know that much about the company.' He said: 'Well, I think
I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really
like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the
board.' And I said thanks. Didn't think I'd ever see him
again.''
Bush would soon officially resign from Caterair's board.
Around this time, Karl Rove set up meetings to discuss
Bush's possible candidacy for the governorship of Texas.
Six years after that, he was elected leader of the free
world and began ''case cracking'' on a dizzying array of
subjects, proffering his various solutions, in both foreign
and domestic affairs. But the pointed ''defend your
position'' queries -- so central to the H.B.S. method and
rigorous analysis of all kinds -- were infrequent.
Questioning a regional supervisor or V.P. for planning is
one thing. Questioning the president of the United States
is another.
Still, some couldn't resist. As I reported in ''The Price
of Loyalty,'' at the Bush administration's first National
Security Council meeting, Bush asked if anyone had ever met
Ariel Sharon. Some were uncertain if it was a joke. It
wasn't: Bush launched into a riff about briefly meeting
Sharon two years before, how he wouldn't ''go by past
reputations when it comes to Sharon. . . . I'm going to
take him at face value,'' and how the United States should
pull out of the Arab-Israeli conflict because ''I don't see
much we can do over there at this point.'' Colin Powell,
for one, seemed startled. This would reverse 30 years of
policy -- since the Nixon administration -- of American
engagement. Such a move would unleash Sharon, Powell
countered, and tear the delicate fabric of the Mideast in
ways that might be irreparable. Bush brushed aside Powell's
concerns impatiently. ''Sometimes a show of force by one
side can really clarify things.''
Such challenges -- from either Powell or his opposite
number as the top official in domestic policy, Paul O'Neill
-- were trials that Bush had less and less patience for as
the months passed. He made that clear to his top
lieutenants. Gradually, Bush lost what Richard Perle, who
would later head a largely private-sector group under Bush
called the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had
described as his open posture during foreign-policy
tutorials prior to the 2000 campaign. (''He had the
confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know
very much,'' Perle said.) By midyear 2001, a
stand-and-deliver rhythm was established. Meetings, large
and small, started to take on a scripted quality. Even
then, the circle around Bush was tightening. Top officials,
from cabinet members on down, were often told when they
would speak in Bush's presence, for how long and on what
topic. The president would listen without betraying any
reaction. Sometimes there would be cross-discussions --
Powell and Rumsfeld, for instance, briefly parrying on an
issue -- but the president would rarely prod anyone with
direct, informed questions.
Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily
shaped by its president, by his character, personality and
priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels.
There are, of course, a chief executive's policies, which
are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a
few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start
to adopt the boss's phraseology, his presumptions, his
rhythms. If a president fishes, people buy poles; if he
expresses displeasure, aides get busy finding evidence to
support the judgment. A staff channels the leader.
A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping
George W. Bush's White House through the summer of 2001: a
disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of
decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes
bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly
questioners. Already Bush was saying, Have faith in me and
my decisions, and you'll be rewarded. All through the White
House, people were channeling the boss. He didn't
second-guess himself; why should they?
Considering the trials that were soon to arrive, it is easy
to overlook what a difficult time this must have been for
George W. Bush. For nearly three decades, he had sat in
classrooms, and then at mahogany tables in corporate
suites, with little to contribute. Then, as governor of
Texas, he was graced with a pliable enough bipartisan
Legislature, and the Legislature is where the real work in
that state's governance gets done. The Texas Legislature's
tension of opposites offered the structure of point and
counterpoint, which Bush could navigate effectively with
his strong, improvisational skills.
But the mahogany tables were now in the Situation Room and
in the large conference room adjacent to the Oval Office.
He guided a ruling party. Every issue that entered that
rarefied sanctum required a complex decision, demanding
focus, thoroughness and analytical potency.
For the president, as Biden said, to be acutely aware of
his weaknesses -- and to have to worry about revealing
uncertainty or need or confusion, even to senior officials
-- must have presented an untenable bind. By summer's end
that first year, Vice President Dick Cheney had stopped
talking in meetings he attended with Bush. They would talk
privately, or at their weekly lunch. The president was
spending a lot of time outside the White House, often at
the ranch, in the presence of only the most trustworthy
confidants. The circle around Bush is the tightest around
any president in the modern era, and ''it's both exclusive
and exclusionary,'' Christopher DeMuth, president of the
American Enterprise Institute, the neoconservative policy
group, told me. ''It's a too tightly managed
decision-making process. When they make decisions, a very
small number of people are in the room, and it has a
certain effect of constricting the range of alternatives
being offered.''
On Sept. 11, 2001, the country watched intently to see if
and how Bush would lead. After a couple of days in which he
seemed shaky and uncertain, he emerged, and the moment he
began to lead -- standing on the World Trade Center's
rubble with a bullhorn -- for much of America, any
lingering doubts about his abilities vanished. No one could
afford doubt, not then. They wanted action, and George W.
Bush was ready, having never felt the reasonable
hesitations that slowed more deliberative men, and many
presidents, including his father.
Within a few days of the attacks, Bush decided on the
invasion of Afghanistan and was barking orders. His speech
to the joint session of Congress on Sept. 20 will most
likely be the greatest of his presidency. He prayed for
God's help. And many Americans, of all faiths, prayed with
him -- or for him. It was simple and nondenominational: a
prayer that he'd be up to this moment, so that he -- and,
by extension, we as a country -- would triumph in that dark
hour.
This is where the faith-based presidency truly takes shape.
Faith, which for months had been coloring the
decision-making process and a host of political tactics --
think of his address to the nation on stem-cell research --
now began to guide events. It was the most natural
ascension: George W. Bush turning to faith in his darkest
moment and discovering a wellspring of power and
confidence.
Of course, the mandates of sound, sober analysis didn't
vanish. They never do. Ask any entrepreneur with a blazing
idea when, a few years along, the first debt payments start
coming due. Or the C.E.O., certain that a high stock price
affirms his sweeping vision, until that neglected, flagging
division cripples the company. There's a startled look --
how'd that happen? In this case, the challenge of
mobilizing the various agencies of the United States
government and making certain that agreed-upon goals become
demonstrable outcomes grew exponentially.
Looking back at the months directly following 9/11,
virtually every leading military analyst seems to believe
that rather than using Afghan proxies, we should have used
more American troops, deployed more quickly, to pursue
Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. Many have
also been critical of the president's handling of Saudi
Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 hijackers; despite Bush's
setting goals in the so-called ''financial war on terror,''
the Saudis fa
iled to cooperate with American officials in
hunting for the financial sources of terror. Still, the
nation wanted bold action and was delighted to get it.
Bush's approval rating approached 90 percent. Meanwhile,
the executive's balance between analysis and resolution,
between contemplation and action, was being tipped by the
pull of righteous faith.
It was during a press conference on Sept. 16, in response
to a question about homeland security efforts infringing on
civil rights, that Bush first used the telltale word
''crusade'' in public. ''This is a new kind of -- a new
kind of evil,'' he said. ''And we understand. And the
American people are beginning to understand. This crusade,
this war on terrorism is going to take a while.''
Muslims around the world were incensed. Two days later, Ari
Fleischer tried to perform damage control. ''I think what
the president was saying was -- had no intended
consequences for anybody, Muslim or otherwise, other than
to say that this is a broad cause that he is calling on
America and the nations around the world to join.'' As to
''any connotations that would upset any of our partners, or
anybody else in the world, the president would regret if
anything like that was conveyed.''
A few months later, on Feb. 1, 2002, Jim Wallis of the
Sojourners stood in the Roosevelt Room for the introduction
of Jim Towey as head of the president's faith-based and
community initiative. John DiIulio, the original head, had
left the job feeling that the initiative was not about
''compassionate conservatism,'' as originally promised, but
rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way
to consolidate and energize that part of the base.
Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded
over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand,
and squeezed. ''Jim, how ya doin', how ya doin'!'' he
exclaimed. Wallis was taken aback. Bush excitedly said that
his massage therapist had given him Wallis's book, ''Faith
Works.'' His joy at seeing Wallis, as Wallis and others
remember it, was palpable -- a president, wrestling with
faith and its role at a time of peril, seeing that rare
bird: an independent counselor. Wallis recalls telling Bush
he was doing fine, '''but in the State of the Union address
a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our
energies, our focus, our resources on this war on
terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if
we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also
overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not
only the war on poverty, but we'll lose the war on
terrorism.'''
Bush replied that that was why America needed the
leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy.
''No, Mr. President,'' Wallis says he told Bush, ''We need
your leadership on this question, and all of us will then
commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of
injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll
never defeat the threat of terrorism.''
Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls.
They never spoke again after that.
''When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a
self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,'' Wallis says now.
''What I started to see at this point was the man that
would emerge over the next year -- a messianic American
Calvinist. He doesn't want to hear from anyone who doubts
him.''
But with a country crying out for intrepid leadership, does
a president have time to entertain doubters? In a speech in
Alaska two weeks later, Bush again referred to the war on
terror as a ''crusade.''
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in
Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's
former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a
meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the
White House's displeasure, and then he told me something
that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I
now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the
reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who
''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study
of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something
about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me
off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,''
he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we
create our own reality. And while you're studying that
reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and
that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . .
. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we
do.''
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based
community? Many of the other elected officials in
Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and
Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss
Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush
to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time
Magazine that the president walked in and said: ''Look, I
want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you.'' When
one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped,
''Look, I'm not going to debate it with you.''
The 9/11 commission did not directly address the question
of whether Bush exerted influence over the intelligence
community about the existence of weapons of mass
destruction. That question will be investigated after the
election, but if no tangible evidence of undue pressure is
found, few officials or alumni of the administration whom I
spoke to are likely to be surprised. ''If you operate in a
certain way -- by saying this is how I want to justify what
I've already decided to do, and I don't care how you pull
it off -- you guarantee that you'll get faulty, one-sided
information,'' Paul O'Neill, who was asked to resign his
post of treasury secretary in December 2002, said when we
had dinner a few weeks ago. ''You don't have to issue an
edict, or twist arms, or be overt.''
In a way, the president got what he wanted: a National
Intelligence Estimate on W.M.D. that creatively marshaled a
few thin facts, and then Colin Powell putting his
credibility on the line at the United Nations in a show of
faith. That was enough for George W. Bush to press forward
and invade Iraq. As he told his quasi-memoirist, Bob
Woodward, in ''Plan of Attack'': ''Going into this period,
I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm
surely not going to justify the war based upon God.
Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray to be as
good a messenger of his will as possible.''
Machiavelli's oft-cited line about the adequacy of the
perception of power prompts a question. Is the appearance
of confidence as important as its possession? Can
confidence -- t
rue confidence -- be willed? Or must it be
earned?
George W. Bush, clearly, is one of history's great
confidence men. That is not meant in the huckster's sense,
though many critics claim that on the war in Iraq, the
economy and a few other matters he has engaged in some
manner of bait-and-switch. No, I mean it in the sense that
he's a believer in the power of confidence. At a time when
constituents are uneasy and enemies are probing for
weaknesses, he clearly feels that unflinching confidence
has an almost mystical power. It can all but create
reality.
Whether you can run the world on faith, it's clear you can
run one hell of a campaign on it.
George W. Bush and his team have constructed a
high-performance electoral engine. The soul of this new
machine is the support of millions of likely voters, who
judge his worth based on intangibles -- character,
certainty, fortitude and godliness -- rather than on what
he says or does. The deeper the darkness, the brighter this
filament of faith glows, a faith in the president and the
just God who affirms him.
The leader of the free world is clearly comfortable with
this calculus and artfully encourages it. In the series of
televised, carefully choreographed ''Ask President Bush''
events with supporters around the country, sessions filled
with prayers and blessings, one questioner recently summed
up the feelings of so many Christian conservatives, the
core of the Bush army. ''I've voted Republican from the
very first time I could vote,'' said Gary Walby, a retired
jeweler from Destin, Fla., as he stood before the president
in a crowded college gym. ''And I also want to say this is
the very first time that I have felt that God was in the
White House.'' Bush simply said ''thank you'' as a wave of
raucous applause rose from the assembled.
Every few months, a report surfaces of the president using
strikingly Messianic language, only to be dismissed by the
White House. Three months ago, for instance, in a private
meeting with Amish farmers in Lancaster County, Pa., Bush
was reported to have said, ''I trust God speaks through
me.'' In this ongoing game of winks and nods, a White House
spokesman denied the president had specifically spoken
those words, but noted that ''his faith helps him in his
service to people.''
A recent Gallup Poll noted that 42 percent of Americans
identify themselves as evangelical or ''born again.'' While
this group leans Republican, it includes black urban
churches and is far from monolithic. But Bush clearly draws
his most ardent supporters and tireless workers from this
group, many from a healthy subset of approximately four
million evangelicals who didn't vote in 2000 -- potential
new arrivals to the voting booth who could tip a close
election or push a tight contest toward a rout.
This signaling system -- forceful, national, varied, yet
clean of the president's specific fingerprint -- carries
enormous weight. Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Republican
senator from Rhode Island, has broken with the president
precisely over concerns about the nature of Bush's
certainty. ''This issue,'' he says, of Bush's ''announcing
that 'I carry the word of God' is the key to the election.
The president wants to signal to the base with that
message, but in the swing states he does not.''
Come to the hustings on Labor Day and meet the base. In
2004, you know a candidate by his base, and the Bush
campaign is harnessing the might of churches, with hordes
of voters registering through church-sponsored programs.
Following the news of Bush on his national tour in the week
after the Republican convention, you could sense how a
faith-based president campaigns: on a surf of prayer and
righteous rage.
Righteous rage -- that's what Hardy Billington felt when he
heard about same-sex marriage possibly being made legal in
Massachusetts. ''It made me upset and disgusted, things
going on in Massachusetts,'' the 52-year-old from Poplar
Bluff, Mo., told me. ''I prayed, then I got to work.''
Billington spent $830 in early July to put up a billboard
on the edge of town. It read: ''I Support President Bush
and the Men and Women Fighting for Our Country. We Invite
President Bush to Visit Poplar Bluff.'' Soon Billington and
his friend David Hahn, a fundamentalist preacher, started a
petition drive. They gathered 10,000 signatures. That fact
eventually reached the White House scheduling office.
By late afternoon on a cloudy Labor Day, with a crowd of
more than 20,000 assembled in a public park, Billington
stepped to the podium. ''The largest group I ever talked to
I think was seven people, and I'm not much of a talker,''
Billington, a shy man with three kids and a couple of dozen
rental properties that he owns, told me several days later.
''I've never been so frightened.''
But Billington said he ''looked to God'' and said what was
in his heart. ''The United States is the greatest country
in the world,'' he told the rally. ''President Bush is the
greatest president I have ever known. I love my president.
I love my country. And more important, I love Jesus
Christ.''
The crowd went wild, and they went wild again when the
president finally arrived and gave his stump speech. There
were Bush's periodic stumbles and gaffes, but for the
followers of the faith-based president, that was just fine.
They got it -- and ''it'' was the faith.
And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in
late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser
to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the
president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's
an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do,
all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast,
a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let
me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered
2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy
working people who don't read The New York Times or
Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they
like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the
way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when
you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's
good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like?
They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,''
of course, meant the entire reality-based community.
The bond between Bush and his base is a bond of mutual
support. He supports them with his actions, doing his level
best to stand firm on wedge issues like abortion and
same-sex marriage while he identifies evil in the world, at
home and abroad. They respond with fierce faith. The power
of this transaction is something that people, especially
those who are religious, tend to connect to their own
lives. If you have faith in someone, that person is filled
like a v
essel. Your faith is the wind beneath his or her
wings. That person may well rise to the occasion and
surprise you: I had faith in you, and my faith was
rewarded. Or, I know you've been struggling, and I need to
pray harder.
Bush's speech that day in Poplar Bluff finished with a
mythic appeal: ''For all Americans, these years in our
history will always stand apart,'' he said. ''You know,
there are quiet times in the life of a nation when little
is expected of its leaders. This isn't one of those times.
This is a time that needs -- when we need firm resolve and
clear vision and a deep faith in the values that make us a
great nation.''
The life of the nation and the life of Bush effortlessly
merge -- his fortitude, even in the face of doubters, is
that of the nation; his ordinariness, like theirs, is
heroic; his resolve, to whatever end, will turn the wheel
of history.
Remember, this is consent, informed by the heart and by the
spirit. In the end, Bush doesn't have to say he's ordained
by God. After a day of speeches by Hardy Billington and
others, it goes without saying.
''To me, I just believe God controls everything, and God
uses the president to keep evil down, to see the darkness
and protect this nation,'' Billington told me, voicing an
idea shared by millions of Bush supporters. ''Other people
will not protect us. God gives people choices to make. God
gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation
at this time.''
But when the moment came in the V.I.P. tent to shake Bush's
hand, Billington remembered being reserved. '''I really
thank God that you're the president' was all I told him.''
Bush, he recalled, said, ''Thank you.''
''He knew what I meant,'' Billington said. ''I believe he's
an instrument of God, but I have to be careful about what I
say, you know, in public.''
Is there anyone in America who feels that John Kerry is an
instrument of God?
"I'm going to be real positive, while I keep my foot on
John Kerry's throat,'' George W. Bush said last month at a
confidential luncheon a block away from the White House
with a hundred or so of his most ardent, longtime
supporters, the so-called R.N.C. Regents. This was a
high-rolling crowd -- at one time or another, they had all
given large contributions to Bush or the Republican
National Committee. Bush had known many of them for years,
and a number of them had visited him at the ranch. It was a
long way from Poplar Bluff.
The Bush these supporters heard was a triumphal Bush,
actively beginning to plan his second term. It is a second
term, should it come to pass, that will alter American life
in many ways, if predictions that Bush voiced at the
luncheon come true.
He said emphatically that he expects the Republicans will
gain seats to expand their control of the House and the
Senate. According to notes provided to me, and according to
several guests at the lunch who agreed to speak about what
they heard, he said that ''Osama bin Laden would like to
overthrow the Saudis . . .
then we're in trouble. Because they have a weapon. They
have the oil.'' He said that there will be an opportunity
to appoint a Supreme Court justice shortly after his
inauguration, and perhaps three more high-court vacancies
during his second term.
''Won't that be amazing?'' said Peter Stent, a rancher and
conservationist who attended the luncheon. ''Can you
imagine? Four appointments!''
After his remarks, Bush opened it up for questions, and
someone asked what he's going to do about energy policy
with worldwide oil reserves predicted to peak.
Bush said: ''I'm going to push nuclear energy, drilling in
Alaska and clean coal. Some nuclear-fusion technologies are
interesting.'' He mentions energy from ''processing corn.''
''I'm going to bring all this up in the debate, and I'm
going to push it,'' he said, and then tried out a line.
''Do you realize that ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge] is the size of South Carolina, and where we want to
drill is the size of the Columbia airport?''
The questions came from many directions -- respectful, but
clearly reality-based. About the deficits, he said he'd
''spend whatever it takes to protect our kids in Iraq,''
that ''homeland security cost more than I originally
thought.''
In response to a question, he talked about diversity,
saying that ''hands down,'' he has the most diverse senior
staff in terms of both gender and race. He recalled a
meeting with Chancellor Gerhard Schroder of Germany. ''You
know, I'm sitting there with Schroder one day with Colin
and Condi. And I'm thinking: What's Schroder thinking?!
He's sitting here with two blacks and one's a woman.''
But as the hour passed, Bush kept coming back to the thing
most on his mind: his second term.
''I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in,'' Bush
said, ''with fundamental tax reform, tort reform,
privatizing of Social Security.'' The victories he expects
in November, he said, will give us ''two years, at least,
until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because
after that I'll be quacking like a duck.''
Joseph Gildenhorn, a top contributor who attended the
luncheon and has been invited to visit Bush at his ranch,
said later: ''I've never seen the president so ebullient.
He was so confident. He feels so strongly he will win.''
Yet one part of Bush's 60-odd-minute free-form riff gave
Gildenhorn -- a board member of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee and a former ambassador to Switzerland --
a moment's pause. The president, listing priorities for his
second term, placed near the top of his agenda the
expansion of federal support for faith-based institutions.
The president talked at length about giving the initiative
the full measure of his devotion and said that questions
about separation of church and state were not an issue.
Talk of the faith-based initiative, Gildenhorn said, makes
him ''a little uneasy.'' Many conservative evangelicals
''feel they have a direct line from God,'' he said, and
feel Bush is divinely chosen.
''I think he's religious, I think he's a born-again, I
don't think, though, that he feels that he's been ordained
by God to serve the country.'' Gildenhorn paused, then
said, ''But you know, I really haven't discussed it with
him.''
A regent I spoke to later and who asked not to be
identified told me: ''I'm happy he's certain of victory and
that he's ready to burst forth into his second term, but it
all makes me a little nervous. There are a lot of big
things that he's planning to do domestically, and who knows
what countries we might invade or what might happen in
Iraq. But when it gets complex, he seems to turn to prayer
or God rather than digging in and thinking things through.
What's that line? -- the devil's in the details. If you
don't go after that devil, he'll come after you.''
Bush grew into one of history's most forceful leaders, his
admirers will attest, by replacing hesitation and
reasonable doubt with faith and clarity. Many more will
surely tap this high-voltage connection of fervent faith
and bold action. In politics, the saying goes, anything
that works must be repeated until it is replaced by
something better. The horizon seems clear of competitors.
Can the unfinished American experiment in self-governance
-- sputtering on the watery fuel of illusion and assertion
-- deal with something as nuanced as the subtleties of one
man's faith? What, after all, is the nature of the
particular conversation the president feels he has with God
-- a colloquy upon which the world now precariously turns?
That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and
talk about with George W. Bush. That's impossible now, he
says. He is no longer invited to the White House.
''Faith can cut in so many ways,'' he said. ''If you're
penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance
and accountability and help us reach for something higher
than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that
moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King
did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness --
that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes
self-criticism aside. There's no reflection.
''Where people often get lost is on this very point,'' he
said after a moment of thought. ''Real faith, you see,
leads us to deeper reflection and not -- not ever -- to the
thing we as humans so very much want.''
And what is that?
''Easy certainty.''
Ron Suskind
was the senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall
Street Journal from 1993 to 2000. He is the author most
recently of ''The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the
White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?ex=1099079376&ei=1&en=5b3c3ff6eb331459
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