UPDATED: NOV 8, 2007 

"THE REAL MEANING OF THE “FAITH-BASED PRESIDENCY, PART 1”
            A RE-RUN  

This column originally ran as my “TPJ No. 38,” on December 9, 2004.  It is presented here as part of my occasional series of “Bush re-runs,” in the run-up to the 2008 election.  In that election, of course, I feel that a key to a Democratic victory is to place George Bush and his Presidency front and center as to what exactly is wrong with our great nation, what it is absolutely essential to fix, and that only a Democratic president, with a Democratic Congress, can accomplish that task.  In this column, just after the Second Presidency Stealing by Rove, et al, I considered the so-called “faith-based Presidency.”  Since this column was originally written, the role and function of this totally unconstitutional Presidential concept has, if anything, become even more threatening to the preservation of U.S. Constitutional Democracy in the face of  the continued Georgite assault on it.  And so, with the Georgites, the more things change the more they stay exactly the same, if not moreso.

In The New York Times Magazine of October 17, 2004, Ron Suskind gave the most comprehensive picture yet of George W. Bush’s concept of the “faith-based Presidency” and how it operates.  George Bush apparently really believes that he is on a mission from God, that his decision-making is based on God’s wishes, and that he is carrying out God’s vision.  A major and well-known feature of this approach to governing is that Bush acts with absolute certainty.  He makes decisions that he just knows are right, because God is in his mind and Bush knows that God is right.  

Once made, therefore, Bush’s decisions are right, because, expressing the will of God, Bush made them. (In the minds of religious people of the Georgite persuasion, circular reasoning has a very important place.)  Ergo his inability to see that he has ever made a mistake, at least since being ‘born again’.  So naturally, we witnessed the famous news conference and Presidential debate episodes in which he could not think of a single mistake that he had made.  If you never made one, there is nothing to admit, is there?  Another well-known feature of Bush’s approach to governance is that facts do not matter unless they happen to conform to or confirm his preconceived notion of what God’s vision is that he is carrying out.  A third major aspect of his approach, confirmed by Suskind, is that Bush wants a staff that has been trained not to question and not to offer data, evidence, or analysis, apparently either before or after he has made a decision.  This aspect explains thoroughly the character of the changes he is in the process of making in his Cabinet.   

For example, Colin Powell was willing to lie at the UN for him, and thus throw his own reputation into the dustbin of history.  But apparently, on occasion, Powell would privately offer a contrary view on policy or pass along some information/analysis from the State Department staff that did not jibe with Bush’s already firmly-held conclusions.  And so, Powell had to go.  As did George Tenet at the CIA.  While he apparently tried hard to play good soldier, Tenet seems to have had the temerity on occasion to suggest that intelligence might influence policy, even if that intelligence went against Georgite preconceived notions.  Bush’s man Porter Goss has already issued an order that everything coming up from the CIA must be in accord with already set White House policy.  So absolutely gone are the days when knowledge and data might actually help formulate policy.  Policy will, rather, formulate intelligence. 

Mr. Suskind explained and illustrated the major characteristics of Bush-think in great depth.  His writing and conclusions are based on interviews with many different sources who confirm the overall picture.  A number of those sources were willing to let their names be used.  It is fascinating that, to my knowledge, the White House never issued a single denial of any of the content of Mr. Suskind’s report.  Nor did they, as they usually do when negatives appear, furiously, viciously, and repeatedly attack the messenger through their privatized Ministry of Propaganda, Fox “News” Channel, Washington Times, O’RHannibaugh, and etc.  Of course, even if what Suskind wrote were false, the Bush people would be hard pressed to deny it -- because what he reported is exactly how Bush’s base wants him to think and be as President: “God’s emissary.”  It reflects exactly how the Christian Right has portrayed the source of his “victory”: God.  Given what we know from this article, and indeed from many other reports, that picture is indeed an accurate one.   

Despite what is generally recognized as Bush’s approach to governance that leads to his decisions, and his unchanging commitment to them once made, in fact he does change his mind on what are to him relatively unimportant matters.  For example, whether global warming is real or not, whether there should be a 9/11 Commission or not, and whether the nation’s intelligence system should be reformed or not.  He can do this because he knows that nothing coming out of such position changes is going to alter his policies or his representations of reality anyway.   

However, on his big issues, such as: waging war on Iraq; cutting taxes for the rich and the large corporations; ending Social Security as we know it; opening up as much of the US environment to corporate plunder as possible; making the Courts as right-wing as he can so that the Christian Right can get its way on gay marriage and abortion rights and his corporate backers can get governmental corporate policy turned back to that of the McKinley Era as much as possible; eventually destroying the whole of the Federal government as we know it, in accord with the advocacy of Grover Norquist; changing the Constitution without bothering to go through the amendment process, in accord with the policies of Karl Rove (Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian UK, 11/25/04); he is indeed unchanging. 

 The critical issue now facing our country in the wake of Bush’s garnering of a second term (whether by a true electoral win or by cheating) is: what are the implications of the Bush “faith-based” theory of governance for American constitutional government and its future?  I shall offer some answers to this question next week, in Part II of this essay, and it is a subject to which I shall return in more depth from time to time. 

Indeed, dear reader, Part II of this original two-parter, does appear next week.

PS, current: That last question is still the fundamental one facing the nation in the election of 2008.  This is especially so since the likely Republican nominee is a man who is constantly in search of a facsimile of the balcony overlooking the plaza in front of the Vittorio Emmanuel II plaza in Rome (made famous by Il Duce).  The sooner the Democratic candidates recognize, and none of them except for Dennis Kucinich and Chris Dodd (see The Huffington Post Blog of 11/2/07, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-dodd/the-questions-i-wish-we-w_b_70748.html) and in one interview (mirabile dictu) possibly Hillary Clinton (Joe Conason, The New York Observer, 10/25/07), has.  Hillary is right on at least one thing: all the candidates should see Bush and his likely successors as leaders of the Republican Party as the principal enemies, most especially as enemies of US Constitutional Democracy, not each other.

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