Bush's Faith Now Fair Game?

JB

Maureen Dowd's latest column exemplifies an important trend: until quite recently most people would have thought that President Bush's faith was a strong point. It demonstrated that he had a moral compass and that he could be trusted with the most serious decisions facing the country. The recent Suskind article describing the Administration's rejection of the "reality based community" and the recent interview with Pat Robertson stating that Bush did not believe there would be any casualties in Iraq suggest something different: Now, two weeks before the election, Bush's critics are breaching an unspoken taboo. They are arguing, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, that Bush's religious faith blinds him and prevents him from making sound public decisions.

One must tread very carefully here. Criticizing Bush on these terms requires that one must take care to distinguish his kind of faith from that practiced by many other Americans. One must make the case that unlike other Americans, whose faith strengthens and grounds them in reality, Bush's faith limits him and allows him to avoid facing hard questions. That is to say, Bush uses his religion in a particular way: to justify what he wants to do to himself, to avoid recalcitrant experience, and escape criticism and condemnation. For George W. Bush, religion is the opiate of the Presidency.

Is this a criticism of religious faith in general? Certainly not. The point of having faith is not to escape reality, but to see it clearly, as it is, and still be able to go on, because one has hope for something better and believes in something higher. This sort of faith takes strength of character, and it gives strength in return. It is precisely this sort of faith-- and this sort of strength of character that Bush lacks. Bush's problem, in short, is not that he has faith. It is that he lacks character.

It is disturbing enough that Bush blinds himself and uses his faith as an excuse for his behavior. What is equally disturbing is that his advisers, many of whom are not particularly religious, have become deeply codependent with his him. He demands completely loyalty from them, and they, in turn, make up whatever stories are necessary to justify an increasingly disastrous course of action to themselves. Their actions cannot be blamed on misguided religious faith. Instead, one must blame their actions on a different kind of faith: a particularly toxic combination of syncophancy toward the President, arrogance toward the outside world, groupthink, and hubris.