Guest Post by Morbo
Among the flurry of resignations from the White House this week, I would not want one to get lost in the shuffle and go unnoticed: James Towey is leaving — and it’s high time.
Towey ran the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Under his watch, the “faith-based” approach, always of dubious constitutionality, degenerated into a vehicle to attack the church-state wall and energize the kook right’s fundamentalist base as well as became a slush fund to lure black and Hispanic pastors away from the Democratic Party.
Don’t take my word for it. A chief backer of the initiative, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) recently told The Washington Post that the program took on a partisan cast because Republicans needed to see some payoff at the polls or they would not support it.
“Quite frankly,” said Souder, “part of the reason it went political is because we can’t sell it unless we can show Republicans a political advantage to it, because it’s not our base.”
Towey denied the partisan angle. But he cannot deny this: During the 2002 and 2004 election seasons, he appeared alongside Republican candidates at rallies aimed at religious voters. The message wasn’t even subtle: Vote Republican and your congregation will get a slice of the faith-based pie!
What Towey didn’t tell people was that the slice, under Bush, would just get smaller and smaller. As spending for social services plummeted, all the administration could think to do was pit one denomination against another in a theological smack down for what crumbs remained.
Towey advocated for the “right” of religious groups to take millions in tax dollars yet still discriminate on religious grounds when hiring staff. He insisted that even Head Start should be able to do this, although that program by law contains no religious content.
What’s most infuriating about Towey’s tenure is that he regularly posed as a champion of the poor. He loved to talk about how he once worked for Mother Teresa. In speeches, he invoked his Catholic faith and called for compassion toward those in need.
Catholic doctrine does teach an admirable form of social justice and reminds us that Jesus constantly expressed concern for the least among us. Right-wing Catholics, of course, usually ignore all of this, and Towey’s nod to it was all lip service. He talked about the need to help the poor, then went to work to elect a slew of reactionary Republicans who have slashed services for the poor and engineered the greatest transfer of wealth to the rich since the days of the Robber Barons.
That is Towey’s legacy. By casting his lot with Bush, he endorsed tax cuts and genteel socialism for the rich and a lecture on bootstrap capitalism coupled with a fundamentalist sermon for the poor. (Remember, under the initiative, TV preacher/hate-monger/deranged assassination advocate/vitamin peddler Pat Robertson received grants worth over $14 million.)
I’m sure someone equally horrible will be hired to fill Towey’s shoes. Still, I can’t wait until he runs off to oversee St. Vincent College, a private institution in Latrobe, Pa. No need to delay, Jim. Don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out.