In the 1980s, I interviewed Paul Rees, the evangelical leader who has since passed on. One of my questions was simply, “What magazines do you read.” He mentioned several which I expected, and added, “The Christian Century.” That surprised me, it being a mainstream Protestant publication. He noted my surprise, and said, “I don’t agree with much of what they say, but I want to know what they’re saying.”

That’s been my attitude toward many things. And it’s why I read a lengthy profile of Al Gore in the New Yorker a few months ago. I would never vote for the guy for President, but he’s a good thinker (with a different view of the world than me, and therefore different conclusions) and a good writer. The profile was excellent, one of the best articles I’ve read during the past year. It focused on showing what Gore’s life is like now after his disappointment in the 2001 election.

I was weeding out old magazines this morning, and came across that article. I reread some parts I had highlighted. I thought I’d print some of what Gore had to say about George Bush, because I found it quite fascinating. Gore said:

“The real distinction of this Presidency is that, at its core, he is a very weak man. He projects himself as incredibly strong, but behind closed doors he is incapable of saying no to his biggest financial supporters and his coalition in the Oval Office. He’s been shockingly malleable to Cheney and Rumsfield and Wolfowitz…. He was rolled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He was too weak to resist it.

“I’m not of the school that questions his intelligence. There are different kinds of intelligence, and it’s arrogant for a person with one kind of intelligence to question someone with another kind. He certainly is a master at some things, and he has a following. He seeks strength in simplicity. But, in today’s world, that’s often a problem. I don’t think that he’s weak intellectually. I think that he is incurious.

“I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and like all bullies, he’s a coward when confronted with a force that he’s fearful of. His reactions to the extravagant and unbelievably selfish wish lists of the wealthy interest groups that put him in the White House is obsequious. The degree of obsequiousness that is involved in saying ‚Äòyes, yes, yes, yes yes’ to whatever these people want, no matter the damage and harm done to the nation as a whole‚Äîthat can only come from genuine moral cowardice. I don’t see any other explanation for it.”

I’m not printing this because I agree with it. But I do find it interesting.

I’m also conscious of the fact that in my circles–working for a conservative evangelical denomination that skews very heavily toward the Republican Party–printing anything negative about George Bush is almost heresy. I know way to many people who give Bush a pass on just about anything he does. That frightens me. Though I voted for Bush twice, without regrets, and will admit that he had some shining moments after 9/11, I’m not a big fan and I don’t think history will treat him very well. But that’s something I can tackle later, if I dare.

The US is funding a fleet of planes in Columbia that spray cocaine plants. The thing is, it kinda works against us. A few mutant plants aren’t killed. The farmers make cuttings from those plants and distribute them, resulting in whole fields of cocaine plants resistant to spraying. Since the spraying kills all other plants too, the result is that our planes actually do the weeding for the farmers, eliminating other plants competing for soil nutrients. We enable the cocaine plants to grow stronger.

Not only that, but the spraying often ends up killing legitimate crops. So, to earn a living, farmers turn to the only crop that is resistant to spraying–the “Roundup Ready” cocaine.

It just shows that problems aren’t always as easy to solve as we think.

I just finished a little Newsweek article about John Kerry urging Democrats to moderate their pro-abortion views. Hardly anybody agrees with partial-birth abortion; most people view it as an extreme and unreasonable procedure. If the Democrats had come out against partial-birth abortion, more undecided voters might have swung their way. But the Planned Parenthood hardliners won’t allow that, citing Slippery Slope arguments: if they give in on this admittedly extreme position, they’ll next be asked to compromise on something less extreme, and then something else–until, eventually, abortion is outlawed altogether. It’s the same reason the National Rifle Association adamantly defends the right of hunters to bear bazookas. And so, apparently, the pro-abortion hard-liners, in a most unpragmatic fashion, would seemingly rather lose an election than moderate their agenda.

But people on the right can be just as unpragmatic. I think it was Charles Colson that I heard speak about this some years ago. He said that during the 1980s, Congress could have passed legislation banning abortion in many cases. However, the legislation was deemed soft, compromising, by Religious Right hardliners who insisted on banning all abortions. They took an “all or nothing” position–and got nothing. Colson said (I’m making up numbers, because I don’t know the real ones), “If there are now two million abortions a year, and we could have prevented one million of them–wouldn’t that have been a good thing? But by refusing to take what we could get, at that time, we effectively gave our permission for a million more babies to be aborted each year.”

But, had pro-life legislators backed such partial measures, they would have reaped the wrath of the all-or-nothing crowd, their key supporters, and possibly been committing political suicide. Interesting, the choices politicians must make.

Although I voted for George Bush, my main complaint about him is his clear preference for the “needs” of the rich. This is not only a complaint about him, but about the Republican Party in general (of which I’m a part). We claim to be the party of moral values, and yet when it comes to social justice and looking out for the poor–a group that that Bible continually tells us to look out for–we fall flat. We Republicans are good in a lot of areas when it comes to values, but not in this one. At least not when it comes to national policy (because at the local level, Christians who are also Republicans do much to help the poor).

BusinessWeek’s November 1 issue contained a column by Laura D’Andrea Tyson which discussed the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. She points out that in the 1990s, most of the growth in income and wealthy was concentrated among the top 10% of households, who now account for 44% of total household income in the US, compared to 33% in 1980.

“Income and wealth are more unevenly distributed among Americans than at any time since the Jazz Age of the 1920s. On measures of income and wealth inequality, the US tops the charts among the advanced industrial nations. Yet rather than fashion economic policy to ameliorate the trends of growing income and wealth inequality, President Bush has championed policies that have exacerbated them.”

She notes that the Bush tax cuts “have boosted the after-tax incomes of the top 1% of households, with average incomes in excess of $1 million, by 10%–compared with a 2.3% increase for middle-income families with average incomes of $57,000, and a 1.6% increase for the bottom 20% of families, with average incomes of less than $17,000. The tax cuts for millionaires alone have reduced government revenues by $90 billion a year….”

“As an intended consequence of the Bush tax cuts, the share of federal taxes paid by the bottom 80% of taxpayers has increased, while the share paid by the top 1% has dropped.” And if Bush succeeds in making his tax cuts permanent, “he will have chosen tax relief for the rich over strengthening the Social Security system, on which low-income workers, disabled workers, widows, and surviving children depend to avoid poverty.”

Notice the groups she mentioned–the same groups that Jesus admonished people to look out for: the poor, the infirm, widows, orphans. I look forward to the day when a national Republican politician actively champions the needs of the same poeple for whom Jesus was a champion. I really don’t want to side with the Democrats on this one.

I stayed up until NBC called Ohio for Bush. I think that was around 2:30, though it’s a bit fuzzy. I really didn’t expect Bush to win so easily. Most of the commentators agreed that “values” was the crucial issue, the thing that either swung people to Bush or kept them in his fold. I was glad to hear that. Values was certainly the deal-breaker with me.

Tom Brokaw mentioned twice–once in the early morning hours, then again on the Imus program this morning–that he had talked to a number of evangelical Christians who felt they were mocked by the Democratic party. But you just wait–in 2008, the Democrats will trot out the Hollywood celebs again, and Michael Moore will make another film, and Sean Penn and Ashton Kutcher and friends will become Democratic spokespersons. They just can’t help themselves. They get a lot of money from celebrities, and celebs love the spotlight. And it just turns off more people than they realize–certainly the people who vote on the basis of values.

I thought Republicans might gain a seat or two in the Senate, but they did better than that. And to unseat Tom Daschle? Wow. But I guess we are talking here about the Dakotas (North or South? I can’t remember. Seems like South.), which are not exactly bastions of liberalism. Whether or not Bush uses his majorities in the House and Senate to do something meaningful, like in health care–that’s the question. He has had majorities for the past two years, but hasn’t capitalized on them. I’m sure he’ll want to give the rich some more tax cuts and loopholes.

Now the stage is set for Hillary to run in 2008. Does anybody doubt that she will? I don’t think she stands a chance, but hey–give it a shot, lady.

John Edwards is now off of the political stage. He ran for President WAY too early. If he had spent at least a full term in the Senate, preferably two, and built a legislative resume and developed a network, and THEN run maybe in 2008–he would have been very formidable. But he wanted it NOW, he gave up his Senate seat, and now it’s back to the courtroom for the trial lawyer. He’s extremely talented. But he got impatient, and now he’s gone. It’s been nice knowing you, John.