Faith-Based Presidency
Ron Suskind writes in The New York Times:
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.)
The above is just one example of the many people, both Democrat and Republican, who have encountered Bush's insistence that he doesn't need facts and analysis to arrive at policy decisions. Bush relies on this gut, his instincts, and his prayers. Bush runs the nation based on his faith and nothing more. Only a few people were willing to talk to Suskind, though, because many are afraid of what might happen to them if their betrayal becomes known.
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?
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.''
Whether we are talking about a small company or the administration of an entire nation, decision makers do themselves and everyone who depends upon them a disservice by surrounding themselves with sycophants who are unable to articulate a broad range of options and choices.
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.''
One thing that the above reminds me most vividly of is how strong a role the promotion of "manly action" and denigration of "feminine intellectualism" plays in fascist ideology. One of the basic qualities of fascist movements, as described by Umberto Eco, is:
Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds."
Jeff Sharlet comments in The Revealer:
Believing, it seems, is more important to the President than the substance of his belief. Jesus Christ’s particular teachings -- well, those are good, too. But what really matters is that if you believe you can do something, you can. What Suskind misses, and what Bush’s more orthodox Christian supporters seem to dodge, is that this is not Christian doctrine by any definition. It is, in fact, a key element of the broad, heterodox movement known as New Age religion.
A common aspect of many New Age schools of thought (though not all; plenty of them blend numerous philosophical traditions in a sophisticated manner) is a gentle disdain for perceived reality. Many New Agers argue that their beliefs are actually ancient; and, despite the fact that the superficial characteristics are often of a recent vintage, there’s some truth to that assertion. New Age religions are, literally, reactionary, responses to what’s been called the disenchantment of the world. Another word for that process is the Enlightenment, with its claims of empirical accuracy. New Age movements attempt to revive -- or create anew --pre-Enlightenment ideas about magic, alchemy, ghosts, and whatever else practitioners can glean from a record for the most part expunged by institutional Christianity.
Christian fundamentalism, meanwhile, is the child of the Enlightenment, a functionalist view of faith that’s metaphorically “scientific.” It's scripture as read by a cranky engineer who just wants to know how God works. The Bible, for a fundamentalist, isn’t powerful literature demanding our ever-changing discernment; it’s an instruction manual. But Bush, we’re told time and again by supporters and detractors, is not a details man. Not much of a reader, either. He is a “heart” man, as pollster John Zogby’s Wizard of Oz characterization of the candidates would have it (Kerry the Tin Man, all brains and no heart, vs. Bush the Scarecrow, nothing but heart and straw).
What was the President’s answer? That God told him so? Please. Those who accuse him of hearing voices haven’t been paying attention to what he’s been saying.
Sharlet's analysis is interesting, except for that last bit. According to Haaretz, Bush has very specifically said that God was talking to him and giving him instructions on what to do. It would seem, then, that it is Sharlet who hasn't been paying attention to what Bush is saying. Just because Bush incorporates certain elements common to contemporary New Age belief systems doesn't mean that he doesn't also rely on an old-fashioned faith that includes talking to God and believing what you think God is telling you.
Legal Fiction has some interesting things to say:
We are quite literally witnessing the Bolshevikation of American politics. We’re seeing an almost unthinkable degree of consolidation of both message and action across a wide range of groups including Congress, the media, the administrative agencies, and even bloggers. ... [T]he obsession with loyalty – and the implementation of that idea – is poisonous to our democracy. And it’s perfectly clear to see a disturbing trend of consolidation of power coupled with absolute loyalty spreading across our democracy.
First, we’ve witnessed the appointment of hacks (whose loyalty will be unquestioned) to very important positions – Porter Goss to the CIA; Frist to Senate Majority Leader; and the Heritage Foundation interns to the CPA in Iraq. Second, we’ve witnessed the rise of a major media empire that is pretty damn close to the sorts of state-sponsored propaganda machines seen in Communist countries. One branch of this empire even controls a substantial number of public broadcast stations. Third, as Frank Rich explained today, we’ve witnessed an assault on the media and communications industries (especially if they’ve challenged the administration). Fourth, we’ve witnessed the abuse of legislative procedure and even gerrymandering to thwart the democratic process by making it more of a top-down, efficient structure. Fifth, we’ve witnessed a staggering campaign of blatant deception that has gone unreported by a media who lives in mortal fear of being labeled as biased liberals. Sixth, we’ve witnessed rather obvious examples of vote-suppression and even voting fraud.
There’s an obvious pattern here. Everything mentioned above – from eviscerating the independence of the CIA to voting fraud to attacking the media – is a means of entrenching existing power by weakening those institutions or structures that normally challenge it and serve as a check upon it.
Publius here is uncertain whether our democratic system is still capable of checking such abuses of power. It's a reasonable, if depressing, question and I suppose the answer to that will be largely determined by the results of the upcoming presidential election. A win by John Kerry wouldn't be enough to even entirely change the tide because it is likely that conservatives, but especially religious conservatives and unethical neoconservatives, will continue to find ways to abuse and corrupt the system. A Kerry presidency could, at the very least, prevent things from getting any worse.
I must say that I despair at the rationality of anyone who reads Suskind's article but continues to think that not only has Bush been a good president, but should be reelected to a second term. Even if one approves of particular Bush polices — like those on terrorism and Iraq — it isn't possible for a rational person to approve of the decision making processes used to arrive at those policies. Voting for Bush isn't simply an expression of support for his policies, it's also an expression of support for his irrational methodology and approach to the world. His irrational methodology is untrustworthy over the long term. People who trust it are part of Bush's action-based or faith-based community, not a part of the reality-based or reason-based community.
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