Is George W. Bush God's President?

[Jei]

http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp

January 10, 2002|2:05 PM

Rudolph Giuliani, a devout but not excessively rigorous Catholic, announced
that `there was some divine guidance in the President being elected.'

Is George W. Bush God's President?
by Joe Conason

Do tax cuts for the wealthy represent the will of God?

What might normally be an impertinent and perhaps offensive question
suddenly seems entirely reasonable after hearing George W. Bush's
ungrammatical but passionate pledge to defend the tax cuts his
administration provided to the richest, smallest segment of American
citizens, at the cost of his own life if need be. The vow he uttered during
his town-hall meeting in California over the weekend - "Not over my dead body
will they raise your taxes!" - was the strongest he's made on any subject
since his promise to deliver Osama bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

Even allowing for hyperbole, such edgy remarks indicate what matters most to
Mr. Bush. For the moment, however, he appears more capable of fulfilling the
former promise than the latter. And since it has lately become respectable
to discuss his elevation to the nation's highest office as a matter of
divine will, Mr. Bush's deep determination to empty the Treasury into the
pockets of friends and supporters may likewise signify the unknowable agenda
of the Almighty.

Unbelievers will scoff at such notions, but in the wake of Sept. 11, the
idea that a higher power ordained the inauguration of Mr. Bush is no longer
confined to the loonier fringes of the religious right. While the President
and the First Lady modestly demur whenever this topic comes up, others
around the Oval Office assert that they are convinced. "I think President
Bush is God's man at this hour," a top White House aide told a religious
publication not long ago. Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian
Coalition who now chairs the G.O.P. in Georgia, says his fellow evangelicals
believe God selected the President because "He knew George Bush had the
ability to lead in this compelling way."

Nor is this revelation confined solely to Protestant conservatives. Two days
before Christmas, Rudolph Giuliani, a devout but not excessively rigorous
Catholic, announced his own opinion that "there was some divine guidance in
the President being elected." In this sentiment, the Time magazine "Man of
the Year" was swiftly seconded by a Catholic bishop. (Again, a skeptic might
impiously wonder why the Lord didn't simply bless Mr. Bush with the actual
majority of votes. But faith is nothing without mystery.)

The implications of all this are obviously profound. If the President is
indeed guided by Providence in lavishing additional billions upon those who
already enjoy so much material abundance - even while the numbers of
unemployed, uninsured and homeless soar - then his ascension may represent a
millennial reversal of heavenly policy.

Until now, few directives have been clearer than the guidance enunciated by
prophets of both the Old and New Testaments regarding earthly greed. "Woe to
you who are rich," Jesus told his disciples, "for you have already received
your comfort." The impoverished carpenter also reportedly informed a
well-heeled acquaintance that it is "easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." His
best-known speech included the admonition that "you cannot serve both God
and Mammon."

Universally familiar as those statements are, they are reliably among the
most widely ignored. Entire schools of theology, across all ecumenical
lines, have long been devoted to parsing a convenient loophole in such
injunctions. They aren't the sort of Biblical quotations that politicians
try to post in public schools, or that televangelists cite as evidence that
Republicans are the party of God. What a relief it would be if the tax
policy of the Bush administration means that we no longer have to worry
about worshipping the golden calf.

Divine inspiration may not be a persuasive explanation for Mr. Bush's fiscal
schemes, which are pushing the government into deficit and threatening to
prolong the recession. It is indeed hard to imagine that any omniscient
power would prefer a $254 million tax break for Enron to a cut in payroll
taxes for the working poor. But it's just as difficult to credit any of the
more earthly justifications emanating from the White House press office.

In any case, not all branches of the federal government have awakened yet to
the new dispensation. On the same day that Mr. Bush made his "dead body"
remark, a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office disparaged his
tax cuts as useless for reviving the economy. According to the C.B.O.
analysis, better results would ensue from more progressive cuts in payroll
and sales taxes. While the nonpartisan report appropriately said nothing
about theology, its recommendations were highly reminiscent of that
old-fashioned scriptural preference for the poor and the toilers.

So perhaps Mr. Bush's supporters should reconsider their political epiphany.
The followers of the last public figure who claimed to be executing God's
will are now dodging daisy-cutters.

You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason at observer.com.

This column ran on page 5 in the 1/14/2002 edition of The New York Observer.

Joe Conason is the author of
The Hunting of the President: the Ten-Year Campaign
to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton
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