Jack Goldsmith, Bush’s disaffected former director of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, wrote that “the administration’s conception of presidential power had a kind of theological significance that often trumped political consequences.”
That’s the last straw. It’s time for everybody to stop attributing religious motives to President Bush. Attaching the word “theological” to him or his presidency is as crack-brained as proclaiming Iraq a mission accomplished.
While we’re at it, don’t dignify his administration with five-dollar words like “theocracy.”
What being called by God is to Bush is probably just what thinking is to someone else. Thought is such a rare experience for him that when one crosses his brow he doesn’t recognize it for what it is.
“What’s that voice in my head? Must be God.”
Cue the Church Lady*: “Could it be. . . Satan?”
*Dana Carvey on “Saturday Night Live” — for those too young to remember, YouTube it.
Categories: scholars and rogues
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
I don’t know. Whether intentional or not, I have a hard time accusing Bush of thinking…
Yep, maybe we should not refer to the administration with any word that the president can neither spell nor define. Although that would put writers in a real bind, wouldn’t it? It would leave only fascism and dictatorship…though he may not be able to spell either, he’s certainly spent the last seven years defining them in an American context.
Good article. We were of course told that “We don’t do God.” by the Spin Master.
Currently watching (3 parter) – tonight is the second episode in England.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/listings/programme.shtml?day=sunday&service_id=4221&filename=20071202/20071202_2305_4221_1925_65
“The difficulty is to know how the Christianity influences the politics. Blair himself is reluctant to talk about his religion and, as Rentoul, one of the earliest biographers, points out, even his best friend at Oxford didn’t know of his confirmation. Only after John Smith, himself a Christian socialist, became Labour leader did Blair’s religion become at all visible to political colleagues and the wider public. Not until 1996, when he was interviewed in the Sunday Telegraph, did he give it a significant outing. After that, his press secretary Alastair Campbell closed the subject down: “We don’t do God,” he said, fearing that his boss might be portrayed as either an unworldly dreamer or a sanctimonious hypocrite.
Stephens argues that Blair’s religion was fundamental to his premiership and that his true political inspiration was William Gladstone. Iraq was not a distraction from his premiership, but the defining moment of his leadership, when the thespian, the ruthless pragmatist and the practitioner of low politics were put, as it were, to good use, in the service of “the 19th-century leader of conscience”.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2072443,00.html
There’s God, and then there’s the Republican Godâ„¢.
That was me: Elaine. 🙂
Just typing in details…again.
Well, that Republican God’s envoy on Earth sure likes Tony Blair…fascinating programme with contributions from Clinton and Bush and other people “in the know”.
Blair has admitted that for the public (in England) who were so anti about his position it is in fact worse than we thought. He believed then and now that war was the correct course of action. That the will and understanding of the nature of what we face is still not understood and that we need to wake up and realise the nature of the threat and its wish to destroy the West.
His belief is absolute…his God talks to him and Bush!
..that should read:
That the will to fight is not the prevailing view point of the West and that the West is failing to understand the nature of the threat and that we are truly under attack.
….Republican God?!?
Hey, not all republicans are bigoted, moronic, myopic, theocratic asses, although the VAST majority of our leadership are. Some of us absolutely hate where our party has gone in the las fifteen to twenty years. We are trying to get some of our party back on track but thats about as easy as finding an honest politician republican, democrat, or other.