Christian, Conservative & Compassionate

I recently got an email from a friend in response to the April 1st 2004 National �I�m Embarrassed by My President� day. She said that she was at first offended, but then had to laugh when she realized if she changed the name to Clinton, the entire event would be funny to her. My friend is one of the people I think of when I think of a real Christian. She is accepting, compassionate, loving, kind, smart, funny, and educated. She walks her talk. So I was surprised to hear that she supported the Bush administration.

This piece was originally a letter in response to her, but is also to all those who are Christian or conservative, or both, and feel they must support Bush because they want �integrity and morality� back in the White House.

This question has been plaguing me for a long time: �How can a President and his administration, so many of whom are publicly and loudly disciples of Jesus, be so hypocritical, so misleading, and so unethical? And why do people continue to support him?�

Yes, of course I was also embarrassed by both Clinton's sexual and semantic shenanigans. But I was more embarrassed and outraged at the Republicans' fanatical attempts to take him down from the moment he got into office until--well, their Clinton-bashing continues to this day. And the over 50 million dollars they spent to do it, and the unquestionable detrimental effect it had on Clinton's ability to do his job, including being the first administration to set up a cabinet-level department to fight terror. I was one of the many who believed that Congress should have censured the president and "Move On." Dot org.

But what I don't understand is why you seem to support President Bush.

I would think you'd be embarrassed by his wearing his Christianity so publicly on his sleeve. Seems to me that Jesus had plenty of criticism for, was it the Pharisees?, who prayed so loudly and publicly so often. And as I recall, Jesus saved his harshest criticisms for hypocrites and the wealthy. Especially the wealthy who did little to help the poor.

When I look at Bush's behavior, I do not see a devout Christian who does his best to follow Jesus' example of love and compassion and righteousness, "those of you without sin, cast the first stone." Nor do I even see a real conservative who wants to "conserve" those things in the culture and government that are traditional and good in their opinion.

I see a rich and highly politically indebted hypocrite who misuses his public demonstration of religiosity to manipulate people's opinions and rationalize the radical and hawkish policies of his administration. I see a man who claims to be "pro-life" but is only anti-choice. I miss the "pro-life" part of being pro-war, pro-death penalty, and cutting social services from Head Start to public education to neonatal and drug treatment programs nationwide.

The first thing the administration did when it got into power was to lie about alleged vandalism to the White House and offices done by Clinton staff, a further character assassination of the "hated Clinton." The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has shown there was no such damage. The second thing was to reinstate the �global gag rule� which has cut off US funding for all organizations that even discusses abortion as an option, leaving millions of women at risk of disease or death from reduced access to prenatal care or abortion counseling.

More recently, the GOP-dominated three branches of the government presided over pushing an energy bill that was one of the most corrupt, pork-laden bills in history and a Medicare bill that is widely criticized as being primarily a payoff to pharmaceutical companies while giving little of use to those it claims to benefit. Nearly all non-corporate senior and health groups continue to oppose it. The administration had pressure put on the chief accountant of the Medicare portion of the OMB to keep quiet about the fact that their "cost estimates" were about $150 billion off. Then claimed it was their right to do so afterwards.

The GOP shut out Democrats from the energy bill legislative process, and used esoteric procedural means to hold open the voting on the Medicare bill for hours until they could strong-arm the few maverick Republicans against it to change their vote. Unless you�re familiar with Congressional procedures, you wouldn�t know just how outrageously inappropriate and nearly unprecedented that was. Ask any member of Congress.

An integral part of the Medicare bill was to forbid the government from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for the lowest prices in the name of "free market" theories. No other government or private institution has this relationship with its vendors, whether pharmaceutical or janitorial companies.

�High-level administration officials,� a press code-phrase for �The White House� compromised the secrecy of Valerie Plame-Wilson, a CIA operative who investigated WMDs worldwide, put her life and the lives of all her worldwide contacts in danger, and pretty much squandered all their work, and has all but outright refused to investigate it. She was outed to no less than six journalists. Five of them had the sense of journalistic integrity to refrain from publishing such a clearly politically-motivated outing. Famed �conservative� writer Robert Novak had no such qualms. Once the cat was out of the bag, the administration has done their best to smear her reputation, minimize her importance, and assassinate her character�as they have done to all critics from Secretary of the Treasury Paul O�Neill to terror czar Richard Clark.

Additionally, the administration has operated in more secrecy, has misrepresented more things, and has shown disdain for the press, Congress, and the people they represent more than any administration I can remember. Even more so than Nixon. There have been fewer press conferences by this President (which is the most basic form of accountability to the public in a democracy) than any other modern President. It can't be that he's been too busy; he's also taken more vacation days than any other President in history.

This administration stonewalled the 9/11 commission, which only came to pass because of the pressure of 9/11 families, have stalled or delayed every investigation (including that of the leak that outed Valerie Plame-Wilson), attacked every question or criticism, and have challenged the patriotism of anyone who challenges them.

It used 9/11 as an opportunity to push through foreign and domestic policies that were waiting on the shelf since at least the late 1990s, and formulated by the Project for a New American Century. (www.pnac.org). In at least one of these documents, it was noted that most of the policies would be difficult to enact unless there were another incident along the lines of �Pearl Harbor� to scare people into allowing these policies to enacted. Look for yourself. Longstanding members of PNAC are throughout the administration�s highest offices.

It's not just Bush, it's those who power him, especially people like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney (PNAC, former CEO of Halliburton, high-ranking member of the Bush I, Reagan, and Nixon administrations), Richard Perle (PNAC, assistant Defense Secretary under Reagan and manages Kissinger's Tireme Partners, which got him kicked off the 9/11 commission for conflicts of interest), Paul Wolfowitz (PNAC, on the board of directors of Northrop-Grumman and other military contractor companies�and toy maker HASBRO as well. Hm.), Donald Rumsfeld (PNAC, former muckety-muck at Alcoa Aluminum and others), John Poindexter (convicted of lying to Congress over Iran-Contra), John Negroponte (implicated in Iran-Contra), and many others whose ethics are apparently severely compromised or completely absent. GOP and administration political chief Karl Rove himself has a long track record of being highly unethical, ruthless, and using dirty tricks. He even taught classes in how to use "Nixon-style Dirty Tricks" at one point in his career.

The blatant conflicts of interest in this administration are greater in number, clearer, more widely documented, and more minimized by those officials than any other modern administration. These are ignored by the administration, a good deal of the press, and most Bush supporters. Never before has there been such a revolving door between the public and private sector.

The Bush administration and the GOP do all this and more while railing about morality and integrity, family values, fairness, a level playing field and demonizing both Clinton and all current Democrats. It seems to me the very definition of hypocrisy.

If the stated end goal is to have a higher morality, more integrity, and stronger family values-- which is what I think people most identify with in the Bush administration�s self-presentation--is it moral to lie and be unethical in order to get there?

What would Jesus do?

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