Bush’s Calling (Lengthy article on how Dubya came to that old-time religion.)

Among all the things that liberals loathe about George W. Bush, his religious fervor would seem to be at or near the top of the list. Some consider him a mere pretender, or a hypocrite, lashing out at his post-9/11 persona as a world-transforming warrior with bumper-sticker barbs like “Who would Jesus bomb?” For the most part, though, liberal animus toward Bush’s faith comes from the opposite direction. It is his religious sincerity that infuriates and frightens, especially when contrasted with the easy and empty Bible-toting of, say, a Bill Clinton.

One does not have to dig very deep to explain this hostility. There are the familiar issues of the culture war — the “values” divide between red states and blue. There is also Bush’s personal manner, seemingly perfectly calculated to grate on the sensibilities of worldly, secularist elites. But something more profound may be at work as well. What liberals find objectionable about Bush as a born-again Christian is the kind of politician he has become by means of and on account of his faith. But what may be most discomfiting of all is the degree to which, in this regard, he has successfully laid claim to so many elements of the liberals’ own discarded past, and thereby begun to reverse the polarities of American politics.

Everyone is familiar with the outlines of Bush’s personal story, which retraces the biblical tale of the prodigal son. The fortunate scion of a wealthy and prominent family, he was born with all the advantages of social position but, as a young man, was also intensely burdened by them. He was the class clown, his jaunty, towel-snapping manner concealing a sense of inner purposelessness. He also had a drinking problem, the exact dimensions of which remain unclear, although it was debilitating enough for Bush himself to consider it a near-permanent obstacle in his life.

At forty, according to his cousin John Ellis, George W. Bush was “on the road to nowhere.” He had gone to Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School, and run for Congress, and yet he had come up short every time, in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. As Ellis summed up, “To go through every stage of life and be found wanting and know that people find you wanting, that’s a real grind.”

What changed between being lost in a dark wood at forty and a presidential candidacy at fifty-two? As is well known, Bush underwent a religious conversion. It was the key to his transformation into a focused, determined, and remarkably self-disciplined man. This conversion followed the classic evangelical pattern and occurred under classic evangelical influences, not the least significant of which was a private conversation in the summer of 1985 with the Reverend Billy Graham.

"For if it is plausible to suggest that the conservative party is the party of progress, it is even more plausible to argue that the liberal party has become the party of opposition to change—the party of entrenched interests, of an obsolete and shrinking labor movement, of hidebound public bureaucracies and of the even more hidebound politics of race, class, and sex, of disdain for the free and democratic expression of traditional moral values, and of a reflexive distrust of American power and American influence as a force for good in the world".

snip

"Optimism is, in most respects, a political strength, and an appropriate way for democratic leaders to present themselves to the public. But just as individualism needs the constraints of religion and morality, so optimism needs the ballast of memory and a sense of the tragic to give it resiliency and depth. There is a reason why the Christian tradition distinguishes between hope, which is considered a theological virtue, and optimism, which is not. Conservatism will be like the salt that has lost its savor if it abandons its mission to remind us of what Thomas Sowell has called “the constrained vision” of human existence—the vision that sees life as a struggle full of unintended consequences and tragic dilemmas, involving people whose noblest efforts often fail, sometimes miserably so".

Lots of stimulating thoughts in this article.

I think this is a very good insight into the character of George Bush. It explains why he remains such an infuriating enigma to the left. It also identifies but does not explain why he departs from paleo conservative principles.

The explanation of the visceral hatred of the left for things Christian is a good beginning but the author fails to acknowledge the baleful influence of The Frankfurt School in turning America away from every evangelical value it ever held dear.

The author notes but does not fully explain why conservatives are sometimes disappointed in Bush:

Bush’s evangelicalism also helps to explain his willingness to depart from what might be conventionally regarded as conservative orthodoxy. There is, for example, the audacity of his foreign policy, which some conservatives have not hesitated to condemn as reckless and as a very un-conservative form of utopianism. And there are his relatively favorable views of federal social and educational programs, his sensitivity to issues of racial injustice and reconciliation, his softness on immigration, his faith-based initiative, his African AIDS initiative.

All of these are best explained by his religious convictions, which, trumping more traditionally conservative impulses, have made him something other, and more, than the oil-and-gas man of his early adulthood. They have made him, indeed, something of a progressive.

Essentially, the author has it right: Bush is an evangelical Christian first and only incidentally a conservative. So long as these philosophies do not conflict, Bush can be a conservative. It is interesting that the author ascribes the difference in the understanding of the essential nature of man which divides Bush and fellow evangelicals from libs. As I have posted, the Christian does not see man as misguided, a creature primarily in need of education, as does the liberal, but as a fallen creature essentially in need of rebirth. The liberal road leads to a felt need to control the individual (they call it "education") but the Christian promise is to liberate him when he becomes a new creature in God and let him grow in that new life. The best illustration of this cleft in approach is the matter of teen sex. The libs think it is a matter of education - as if the kids cannot figure out that tab A goes into slot B- and teen pregnancy will abate as girls learn where babys come from.

The divide between liberals and conservatives, or the loathing and fear by liberals against Christians can not be fully explained by differences over the placement of the christmas tree in the village square. Liberals react to Christianity as a vampire to the cross. They instinctively understand without fully knowing why that they cannot ultimately coexist.

Bush is merely a prominent embodiment of that existential threat.

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