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March 24, 2006

What did the president believe, and when did he believe it?

I imagine almost any American found the scene a little disturbing; the only disagreement might be about why.

On Tuesday, at a rare Q&A session following Bush's latest speech-instead-of-a-policy on Iraq, the lead-off question took an unexpected turn:

My question is that author and former Nixon administration official Kevin Phillips, in his latest book, American Theocracy, discusses what has been called radical Christianity and its growing involvement into government and politics. He makes the point that members of your administration have reached out to prophetic Christians who see the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism as signs of the apocalypse. Do you believe this, that the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism are signs of the apocalypse? And if not, why not?

Bush's handlers--and, indeed, life itself--had clearly failed to prepare him to answer this question:

President Bush: Um..uh...er...(laughter from audience and Bush)...um..uh... I....the answer is...I haven't really thought of it that way (heh, heh) (crowd laughs). Here's how I think of it. Um...first, I've heard of that by the way. I..uh.. the...uh..I, I guess...um...I'm more of a practical fellow. I vowed after September 11th that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. And...uh...my attitude, of course, was affected by the attacks.

I knew we were at a war. I knew that the enemy obviously had to be sophisticated and lethal to fly hijacked airplanes...uh...into facilities of people, innocent people doing nothing, just sitting there going to work. I also knew this about this war on terror that...uh..that uh....the farther we got away from September 11th the more likely that people would, you know, seek comfort and not think about this global war on terror as a global war on terror. And, that's good, by the way. [ . . . ]

With a couple of typos cleaned up, that's a fairly accurate transcription by Donna at News Hounds (their motto: "We watch FOX so you don't have to.")--certainly, it captures how flummoxed Bush was more accurately than the cleaned-up White House transcript.

Back to the question of why: Why did Bush duck the question? (As you'll see from the rest of the transcript, he follows the lines excerpted above with more boilerplate about 9/11 and the war on terror, protecting Americans, etc. He doesn't address the question any further.)

There are a couple of possible reasons, neither of which is very comforting.

One reason, of course, is that he fumbles most questions he hasn't been prepped for. Not helpful here. Let's skip ahead.

Another reason might be because Karl Rove understands that, since most Americans really don't support the Bush agenda once they get tuned in to it, the best way for the Bushies to communicate with "the base" is through dog-whistle politics, pitched at a frequency that only the true believers can hear.

Take the confirmation hearings of Roberts and Alito--and, for that matter, Thomas--for example: If you followed the hearings on television or in your local paper, you learned that their position on Roe v Wade was not decided, or that it was inappropriate for them to comment on cases they might be facing as sitting justices--or in the case of Thomas, that he'd never even discussed the topic with anyone during his professional career.

But if you got your news from right-wing talk radio, or the televangelists--pitched at a frequency humans can't hear--you knew the one thing you needed to know: Roberts and Alito and Thomas would torpedo Roe at the first opportunity. They would never have been nominated otherwise.

(Digression: Karl Rove refers the hard-core conservative loyalists--mostly Christian fundamentalists, code-word racists, and trust-fund Pioneers who make up almost all of the thirty-some percent approval rating that Junior still clings to--as "the base." Isn't that the English translation of "al qaeda?" Just asking. Back to the topic:)

The reliance on "dog-whistle politics" shows that, deep down inside, these guys know they're pushing policies that most Americans wouldn't support. One way to deal with that problem would be to work hard to educate the American people and win them over to your side. Bush's one experiment with that--Social Security privatization--was enough to convince them to stick with the tried and true: Misrepresent your position and push it through beyond the threshold of hearing.

So, back to the question: Why duck the "prophecy/apocalypse" question? Maybe because, in fact, yes--Bush does buy into that package of beliefs, but he knows that it's not a topic to be discussed on an open frequency. As Sidney Bumenthal points out, Bush is hardly a stranger to apocalyptic Christianity:

[The question following his speech was] certainly not the first time Bush has heard of the apocalyptic preoccupation of much of the religious right, having served as evangelical liaison on his father's 1988 presidential campaign. The Rev Jerry Falwell told Newsweek how he brought Tim LaHaye, then an influential rightwing leader, to meet him; LaHaye's Left Behind novels, dramatizing the rapture, Armageddon and the second coming, have sold tens of millions.

But there's another possibility: Perhaps Bush ducked the question because he really isn't committed to the whole prophecy/apocalypse thing.

We all remember that coy moment in the 2000 debates when Bush declared that "Jesus" was his favorite philosopher. Let's put aside for a moment the fact that the only other philosopher he could have named (let alone quoted) was probably Yogi Berra; let's also pass over the fact that, for a self-proclaimed "born-again," praising Jesus as a philosopher is a bit like praising Moses for his penmanship.

But I've always wondered about Bush's come-to-Jesus moment--that famous story about coming out of a legendary bender on his 40th birthday and swearing off alcohol at the advice of family friend Billy Graham. The conversion experience that replaced spirits with spirituality.

Despite the Bible study classes Bush attended at the time, it's never been terribly clear to me that he's a close student of the Bible (why should the Bible be different than anything else he avoids reading?) Not for our George the careful scrutiny of the text of the Gospels--let alone the books of Daniel and Revelations, where most of the juicy eschatological stuff is to be found. And, of course, setting aside the fact that the boy's just not a reader, and apart from the federal money he shovels into "faith-based initiatives," his public life has been one of deep kinship with the money-changers, never showing much concern for the poor, the afflicted, the meek, the downtrodden, the imprisoned on death row--all that Jesus-y stuff. Rather the opposite, really.

No, the "good parts" of the Bible, for Bush, are the parts that reaffirm that God is speaking to and through him as president. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose. As for the rest--the whole structure of ideas and principles that Christian fundamentalism is based on--one is left to wonder if the congenitally incurious Bush really knows or cares much more about all that than he does about any of the other cognitively complex concepts he's supposed to be working with: disarmament, macroeconomics, energy policy, constitutional law, etc. Best left to Karl "Boy Genius" Rove and the rest of his handlers and front men.

If so, Karl's been more than happy to usher the fundamentalists up to the table, bringing along with them their fringe ideas not only on domestic policy, but foreign policy as well.

It would be totally in keeping with Bush's nature for him to mouth a few religious platitudes, then go for a bike ride while the prophetics and apocalyptics roll up their sleeves and get down to business behind closed doors.

Posted by Nothstine at March 24, 2006 03:15 PM