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November 2, 2006

Ted Haggard and George Bush: Saying Less Than They Know.

A
yelish McGarvey:
I recently asked [Pastor Ted] Haggard, himself the pastor of a large church in Colorado, why the president, as a man of supposedly strong faith, did not publicly apologize for continually misleading Americans in the run-up to the Iraq War. Instead, Bush clung zealously to misinformation and half-truths. I asked Haggard why, as a man of Christian principle, Bush did not fully disavow Karl Rove’s despicable smear tactics and apologize for the ugly lies the Bush campaign spread over the years about Ann Richards, John McCain, and John Kerry, among others. After all, isn’t getting right with God -- whatever the political price --the most important thing for the sort of Christian Bush has proclaimed himself to be?

Haggard laughed as though my questions were the most naive he’d ever heard. “I think if you asked the president these questions once he’s out of office,” Haggard said, “he’d say, ‘You’re right. We shouldn’t have done it.’ But right now if he said something like that, well, the world would spin out of control!

“That’s why when Jimmy Carter ran, he [turned out to be] such a terrible president. Because when he [governed], he really tried to maintain [his integrity] and those types of values -- and that is virtually impossible.”

The pastor returned to my charges of Bush’s deceitfulness. “Listen,” he said testily, “I think [we Christian believers] are responsible not to lie [sic], but I don’t think we’re responsible to say everything we know.”

Evidently not.

Posted by Eric at November 2, 2006 7:58 PM

Comments

the world would spin out of control!

...for values of 'our of control', where that means 'not to my liking'.

I have to say, Strauss will rank up there with Marx in terms of being misused for short-term political value. They are both wrong, and have both been proven wrong, but Leon is the big risk today. Given the current divides, it is actually sort of funny. The best part of the joke is that Straussian tailoring of the message assumes credulity, which, while it refreshes, isn't working that well with the instant new cycle. The average prole can, in fact, remember yesterday.

Posted by: fishbane at November 2, 2006 11:20 PM