Faith and the presidency is the subject of Time magazine’s cover story, which poses the question, “Just how devout do Americans want their president to be?”
Time reports that its poll found that those who consider themselves “very religious” support George Bush over John Kerry, 59 percent to 35 percent, while those who describe themselves as “not religious” favor Kerry 69 percent to 22 percent. Writer Nancy Gibbs cites another poll result: Asked if a president should be guided by his faith when making policy, 63 percent of Democrats say no, while 70 percent of Republican answer affirmatively.
Religion and its role in presidential decision-making is far more complex in light of the war in Iraq. Gibbs writes:
Whenever a President has called the country to arms, it has been in the name of a larger good and a higher calling. But the argument is especially freighted when the U.S. is confronting an Arab world that is already deeply suspicious of its intentions. ‘People don’t want a President to think that every important decision has a stamp of God’s approval and that God is always on his side,’ says ethicist [Michael] Cromartie. ‘I think people want their Presidents to be pious but not self-righteously so. So there’s a paradox, isn’t there? A President has to seem to be relying on God’s wisdom but not acting like all his decisions are God’s decisions.’ It’s the difference between praying that you are right and believing that prayer makes you right. The risk, for anybody, is in conscripting God so that policy becomes inarguable.
In a separate article, Time’s Karen Tumulty looks at John Kerry and Catholicism, and finds that those who are attempting to make an issue of his faith by denying the Democratic candidate communion, for example, are a minority among Catholics. “…[M]ost of the American Catholic hierarchy would just as soon see the explosive question go away,” writes Tumulty.
Tumulty raises another often-overlooked issue: The apparent double standard on religiosity being applied to Bush and Kerry. She writes:
For all the attention that has been given Kerry’s problems with the clergy of his church, ‘there have not been an equal number of stories about the way Bush has ignored his own faith group, the United Methodist Church, by declining to accept a delegation of bishops that wanted to talk to him about the war,’ says Philip Amerson, president of the Claremont School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary in Claremont, Calif.
On another front, the National Review’s Byron York reports from the recent Take Back America gathering in Washington organized by Campaign for America’s Future. While some in attendance were comfortable using the L-word (as in landslide) when discussing the outcome in November, others were more comfortable using just the V-word. Writes York:
But for all the excitement about the victory they anticipate, the participants couldn’t muster very much excitement for the candidate who is supposed to make it happen. At event after event, speakers were just as likely to say something lukewarm or even critical of Sen. John Kerry as they were to praise him.
And speaking of crowd-pleasers, Newsweek’s Malcolm Jones reports on the big build-up surrounding the release next Tuesday of Bill Clinton’s autobiography My Life. “In the absence of a new ‘Harry Potter’ this year,” writes Jones, “Clinton’s book is the hands-down favorite to be The Book Most Likely to Appear Before Publication on eBay, where posters for it are already being offered for $4.99.”
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.