Faith has always been a special commodity for politicians. It is not only essential to have or appear to have it, but that it be of the right variety—especially if you’re thinking of running for president. For nearly two centuries, you could be pretty much any religion you wanted, as long as it was mainline Protestant. John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who identified respectively as Roman Catholic and Quaker, stretched the definition of acceptable presidential faith, followed soon after by Jimmy Carter, the first evangelical Christian president, whose political rise prefigured and catalyzed the wider engagement of conservative evangelicals in politics and, as it happened, the rise of the religious right.
These social and political changes have posed distinct challenges for pols seeking to navigate the changes in American religious life and the successes of a culture of religious pluralism. This was particularly so for the patrician Bush family, whose challenges in this arena are a familiar part of their political tale. In addition, however, there remain astounding hidden dimensions involving the skills of “spy craft” acquired in a lifetime of covert intelligence activities by George H.W. (“Poppy”) Bush and many of his closest associates.
| Revelations from Family of Secrets: |
The following is presented in a longer form in a Devil’s Advocate blog post, including a discussion of conspiracy theories. Bush’s “double life”: George H. W. (“Poppy”) Bush, and many of his closest associates were deeply and secretly enmeshed in covert intelligence activities which he has gone to great lengths to conceal. Bush’s extensive intelligence ties prior to his becoming CIA Director in the Ford administration, and going back to World War II, have not been previously reported. JFK and Bay of Pigs: Poppy Bush was deeply involved with an array of CIA covert operators, Bay of Pigs veterans and right-wing Texas oil industry characters linked to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Baker shows that Bush was actually in Dallas on November 21, 1963, and was probably there on the day of the assassination as well. Baker draws no particular conclusions from the fact, except to document, describe, and underscore the great lengths he took to conceal it. Watergate: Baker asserts that (much to his own surprise) Richard Nixon, while not innocent, was not the instigator of the Watergate crimes and cover-up, but appears to have been set up. Among those he implicates in the setup are Poppy Bush and perhaps most remarkably, John Dean, the former White House counsel who became best known as the key whistle-blower. (Continued on second page.) |
This, according to a just-published investigative history of the Bush political dynasty, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces that Put it in the White House, and what Their Influence Means for America (Bloomsbury Press, 2008). Author Russ Baker shows, among other things, that Poppy Bush’s well-known service as a Navy pilot in World War II was also part of his work for Naval Intelligence. This set the stage for an astonishing double life participating in covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency throughout his career.
The story of the reinvention of the religious identities of two presidents and their faith-based political strategy could be easily obscured amidst Family of Secrets’ revelations of the Bush family ties to such murky matters as Watergate and the Kennedy assassination (see sidebar). But Baker’s discussion of how a prominent political family applied the tools of the spy trade to their religious transformation and political strategy is a story that merits attention as religious faith becomes an increasingly popular political commodity.
This dimension of the story of the Bush family dynasty emerges in the wake of the growth of the religious right political movement within the GOP in the early ’80s. In this context, what was a starchy, Episcopalian heir to a blue-blooded Yankee political pedigree to do? And what of his reckless, apparently non-religious, playboy son? These were the intertwined questions faced by Vice President Bush and George W. in the 1980s as they planned Poppy Bush’s run for president in 1988—and W.’s political future.
Baker’s chapter titled “The Conversion” features startling revelations that challenge the well-known narratives of the Bush family’s religious history— including the way they crafted a strategy for winning over the religious right, and the creation of a conversion legend for George W. Bush. The purpose of the latter was not only to position him as a religious and political man of his time, but to neutralize the many issues from his past that threatened to undermine his future in politics (and possibly that of his father as well). The plan probably worked far better than anyone could have hoped. “I’m still amazed,” Doug Wead, a key architect of the Bush family’s evangelical outreach strategy told Baker, “how naïve so many journalists are who have covered politics all of their life.”
Poppy and W. Learn Evangelical Lessons
In the early 1980s, Vice President George H.W. Bush faced a political problem of historic proportions. The religious right, driven by politically energized evangelical Christians had altered the political landscape, helping deliver both the 1980 GOP nomination and the presidency to Ronald Reagan. How could the tragically preppy Poppy—a product of Andover and Yale, and secretive former director of the CIA—adjust to the new political reality in order to run for president in 1988? The answer to this question is part of the Bush family’s slow motion transition from old line Yankee blue bloods to good ol’ Red State politicians.
The story begins with Doug Wead, a former Assemblies of God minister turned what Baker terms a “hybrid marketer-author-speaker-historian-religious-political consultant,” who by 1985 had apparently been vetted and groomed to shape the Bush approach to the religious right. “Instinctively,” Baker writes, “he [Poppy Bush] was uncomfortable with pandering to the masses, and uncomfortable too with ascribing deep personal values to himself. For that matter, he didn’t like to reveal much of anything about himself, which was partly patrician reserve and partly perhaps an instinct reinforced by his covert endeavors over the years.”
If Poppy was going to be president, Wead advised, he needed to learn about “these people.” Eventually, Wead drafted a lengthy memo outlining a way for Bush to surf the rising wave of the religious right to the presidency. “This was the beginning,” according to Wead. But not only for their political strategy. Wead felt that Poppy himself had embarked on a spiritual journey, reworking his own spiritual identity even as he studied the evangelical world and developed a political approach for his 1988 presidential campaign.
Tags: arthur blessitt, billy graham, cia, doug wead, evangelicals, frederick clarkson, george h.w. bush, george w. bush, russ baker
How many words have been written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to what avail? Every article, every book, every pointless diplomatic charade have only become part of the unfolding tragedy. Why a tragedy? Because, true to the form, the Zionist enterprise was a venture that started with a tragic flaw, the creation of a Western state in the heart of the Middle East in direct opposition to the will of the indigenous population, thrust down its throat by a conquering Western power. Those of us who do not recognize this should read the report of the King-Crane Commission, or the letters of Lord Balfour.
Zionists and their defenders (Alan Dershowitz et al)of course always deny this. No, they claim, there was no Palestinian people, or ‘Palestine is such a little place, why couldn’t the Arabs let us have it?’ etc. Yet for any number of reasons things have not panned out the way the Zionist founders had hoped. Israel was supposed to have been the shining light of the Middle East, yet one hundred years later she is a fortress state surrounded by people who hate her whether for rational reasons or irrational ones.
Tragedies usually have bad endings. The crusaders come to mind. They too had a moral reason for capturing Jerusalem, so they thought. After all they only wanted to take back what they felt was rightly theirs. Israel’s supporters – and I count myself among them, need to realize that to survive Israel must beat the Fates, must evade the fate of the tragic hero. Relying on an ephemeral American hegemony is not going to do the trick. What’s needed is a real miracle.
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