ruce 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.)
he 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, business 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 failed 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 -- true 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.
hether 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 vessel. 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.''