As a sales team seeking to promote their political goals,
the present occupants of the White House truly excel. By now, everyone must
know that the Bush administration is a cheerfully efficient team of
“compassionate conservatives” presenting the nation with “charitable choice” so
that we can achieve “faith-based solutions” to our national woes. Yet behind
all this happy-sounding rhetoric lies a reality that is less uplifting and
wholesome.
The President’s determination to channel billions of tax
dollars to religious organizations may support some worthy inner-city programs,
and his lawyers may find a way to finesse the Constitutional questions raised
by such funding. But eventually, choices will have to be made about which
groups get money and which do not-and those choices, being made in the White
House, will inevitably carry a political tinge.
Bearing in mind that the original promoter of “compassionate
conservatism” in the Bush camp was campaign strategist Karl Rove, it seems
likely that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives will soon become a highly
effective patronage scheme. That assumption is confirmed by the new
administration’s reduced emphasis on such traditional executive-branch
operations as the Domestic Policy Council, the Office for Intergovernmental
Affairs and the Office of Public Liaison. Despite all the feel-good assurances
offered to justify the new partnership between church and government, it would
be a mistake to forget that Mr. Rove more closely resembles Boss Tweed than St.
Francis of Assisi.
There were a few ominous hints of what Messrs. Bush and Rove
may intend during one of the Washington gatherings that celebrated the Bush
inauguration. At an enormous “prayer luncheon” held in the Hyatt hotel ballroom
on Capitol Hill on Jan. 19, the featured speaker was none other than John
Ashcroft, then in the midst of those difficult hearings concerning his
nomination as Attorney General. The former Missouri Senator-who wrote the first
federal “charitable choice” legislation a few years ago-told the assembled
multicultural divines that he had just been endorsed by a street musician who
played “Amazing Grace.”
The luncheon was also addressed by Stephen Goldsmith, the
former mayor of Indianapolis appointed to oversee the Office of Faith-Based
Initiatives. “This is an administration that will clear out the regulation
problems, clear out the legal problems,” he vowed. What made Mr. Goldsmith’s
pledge slightly eerie was the luncheon’s sponsorship by the Washington Times
Foundation. The foundation is yet another tentacle of Sun Myung Moon, the
would-be messiah who went to prison for federal tax evasion and illegal
commingling of his business and spiritual interests. At the luncheon, the
Unification Church leader received an award for his “work in support of
traditional family values” (which presumably did not include spiriting young
people away from their homes to serve his cult). Before returning to whatever
palatial compound he currently inhabits, Mr. Moon reminded his fellow ministers
that “religions tell us to fast, to serve others, to be sacrificial.”
In keeping with that
injunction, Mr. Moon runs charitable organizations along with his huge media
and industrial holdings. So does Jerry Falwell, the partisan Baptist preacher
who in recent years has become a virtual adjunct of the Moon empire. And like
his Korean benefactor, Mr. Falwell has long been a loyal promoter of the Bush
family’s political causes.
Another dependable Bush ally is Pat Robertson. The wealthy
televangelist and Christian Coalition leader also controls Operation Blessing,
a far-flung charitable outfit that he expects to benefit from the President’s
faith-based federal boodle. He, too, has had his troubles with government
authorities, due to violations of the Christian Coalition’s tax-exempt status
and also because of Operation Blessing’s misuse of certain assets to serve his
commercial enterprises. Specifically, the charity’s airplanes were found to
have secretly transported personnel and equipment for a diamond-mining
enterprise in Zaire, undertaken by Mr. Robertson in 1994 with the blessing of
the late and unlamented dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
An expose of that affair by the Virginian-Pilot newspaper led to a state investigation of Operation
Blessing two years ago. That probe’s findings were embarrassing, but Virginia’s
Republican governor and attorney general-both recipients of large contributions
from Mr. Robertson-saw no reason to seek indictments or fines. And now, quite
predictably, Mr. Robertson anticipates a nice big check for Operation Blessing
from his White House friends. With one hand he feeds the hungry, while with the
other he endorses and finances candidates like George W. Bush.
Still, Mr. Robertson says he is concerned about governmental
interference in his charity’s promotion of fundamentalist dogma. With officials
like Mr. Rove and Mr. Goldsmith handing out the money, under the sympathetic
eye of Attorney General Ashcroft, he and his fellow evangelical entrepreneurs
can probably rest easy. The same cannot be said for the rest of us taxpayers.