George W. Bush is a religious nut, a real fanatic, some detractors would have you believe as they make a rather astonishing claim: The president sees himself as a messiah, appointed by God to save the world from the evils of terrorism. The detractors base this on . . . what? Nothing, that's what. Nothing at all.
No, the conclusion — rendered by a variety of pundits and even one scholar I ran across — is not derived from presidential quotes or off-the-record interviews or any sort of evidence whatsoever but, as best I can figure it, from their own fevered, leftist, anti-Republican imaginations. They don't like this president or what he stands for, and it fits their purposes — as well, maybe, as their slippery grasp of reality — to portray him as a wild-eyed zealot whose excesses could lead us into misery.
It burns this crowd no end that the president is simultaneously religious and conservative and is not the least bit shy about saying so. To be sure, there are serious questions about the role of religion in public life. But instead of calmly sticking to facts and reason, many of the critics treat their biased speculations as provable assertions and ignore everything that runs counter to their theses, one of them being that Bush is somehow an exception among all but a few American presidents, a believer among secularists.
Let's go back just one president, to Bill Clinton, who became inseparable from his Bible and had weekly, highly publicized visits with three spiritual advisers after his Monica-lies finally caught up with him. I am indebted to a column by E.J. Dionne Jr. of The Washington Post for this Clinton quote: "Ephesians says we should speak the truth with our neighbors for we are members one of another. I believe that. I think that is the single most important political insight, or social insight, in the Bible. And I think it is what should drive us as we behave together."
Note that Clinton, who was giving a 1997 sermon in a church, was being specifically Christian — that the passage he cites is from the New Testament. An argument against Bush is that he is insufficiently universal in his religious references, while in truth he ordinarily takes care to be just that. In his campaign, he did cite Christ as his favored political philosopher, but in his speeches he usually refers to God in broad terms, and no president has gone more out of his way than Bush to lavish praise on the religion of Islam.
And let's not forget that Bush's opponent in the 2000 election, former seminarian Al Gore, announced that he lived his life to "glorify God," and that Gore's Jewish running mate, Joseph Lieberman, went through a campaign stretch when it seemed no speech lacked reference to the power of faith in human life.
Some of the Bush detractors strike me as just flat-out ignorant and silly, as when one worries himself that White House Bible studies could lead those attending to evaluate all political issues from a strictly religious perspective and to walk in lockstep right off the edge of some cliff. I don't know what goes on in these White House sessions, but I have been to Bible studies and can promise you that interpretive disagreements can be rife and that if politics come up, you'll seldom see anyone budge.
It is, however, a danger that some religious people think their faith is guide enough in public policy, and this is as true on the left as on the right. They do not get it that many political questions — most political questions — are more technical than moral or spiritual. You can have all the compassion in the world, and all the good intentions in the world, and what you may accomplish is a world of hurt if you don't know what you are doing.
There are other dangers in mixing religion and politics — for instance, pretending to faith and thus trivializing it for the sake of votes, and crossing the line that prohibits the state establishment of religion. I think Bush is sincere, and I don't think he has crossed the line. Neither do I think he ever strays from relying on the technical advice of the experts. I think his faith is a source of strength for him, and I think mature people of all faiths and no faith can understand his references to God as philosophical and reassuring rather than specifically doctrinal. Might he go too far someday? Sure. But those who say he already has mainly just hate his politics.
Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers. E-mail him at AmbroseJ@shns.com