Friday, December 29, 2006

Believers in the White House

At The New Republic's Open University blog, Richard Stern, a professor emeritus in English Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago and a fiction writer, links to and discusses "an exceptionally shallow and foolish piece" (unusual move) by Joseph Epstein in The Weekly Standard, for whom Epstein is a contributing editor. The Weekly Standard piece says President George W. Bush is likely to essentially "stay the course" in Iraq because he is "a believer" -- by which Epstein means both a man who got religion when he turned 40 and a man who got political religion on Sep. 11, 2001.

Interesting point, and hard to argue with. So far so good, I'd say, despite Stern's judgment. But then we get the statement that Bill Clinton fell into the camp of US presidents who were not believers but "something else -- managers, politicians, operators, men who just wanted the job. While in office, Bill Clinton ... seems to have had as little true belief as any politician in recent decades." Leaving political bias aside, that's highly debatable. Many Republicans would agree that Clinton was driven by the convictions he grew up with, and they were pretty consistent, if often centrist. (He was also driven by a libido that was both consistent and consistently costly.) And anyone who saw the interviews and pained pictures of Clinton when he signed the bill that "ended welfare as we know it" would posit that he was racked by uncertainty but also acting boldly, not following polls.

Epstein's article proceeds to rather boringly catalog the recent presidents who were believers and unbelievers, concluding with the statement that all great presidents were believers -- which is almost a tautology given the broad way he's defined the category.

Posted by Evan Hughes at 02:13 PM

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