One of the problems with public perceptions about crazed TV preacher Pat Robertson is that most perceive him as just a crazed TV preacher. He’ll go on his crazed daily television show (The 700 Club), offer crazed commentary just about everything, and then make crazed rationalizations for his lunacy. The media marvels at his madness, but generally overlooks the bigger problem: Robertson laid out an ambitious agenda years ago, and he’s succeeding.
Thanks to the prosecutor purge scandal, and former Alberto Gonzales aide Monica Goodling’s role in it, the public is learning about Robertson’s Regent University, which, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted over the weekend, is doing exactly what it set out to do.
Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent’s Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that “approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work.” And that’s precisely what its founder desired. The school’s motto is “Christian Leadership To Change the World,” and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a “lie of the left,” according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.
The law school’s dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his “vision” statement that students reflect upon “the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system.” Jason Eige (’99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: “Your Resume Is God’s Instrument.”
As Christopher Hayes explained in The American Prospect, more than two-thirds of Regent students identified themselves as Republicans, but the numbers aren’t as important as the school’s mission. As Hayes noted, “what students are taught at a place like Regent, or even Calvin and Wheaton, is to live out a Christ-centered existence in all facets of their lives. But what they learn is to become Republicans.”
Slate’s Lithwick suggests the more significant problem here is that these Regent grads left Robertson’s confines confused: “Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God’s work with the president’s.” I think there’s some truth to that — Regent grads may be convinced that Bush is somehow God’s messenger on earth — but I suspect the problem is more practical than that.
Thanks to Robertson’s minions infiltrating Bush’s Justice Department, religious right activists are literally helping drive federal law enforcement, particularly when it comes to civil rights and picking U.S. Attorneys.
Because Goodling graduated from Regent in 1999 and has scant prosecutorial experience, her qualifications to evaluate the performance of US attorneys have come under fire. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, asked at a hearing: “Should we be concerned with the experience level of the people who are making these highly significant decisions?” […]
“It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession,” wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . “. . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ.” […]
Many of those who have Regent law degrees, including Goodling, joined the Department of Justice. Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks. Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.
In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people’s civil rights.
“When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was ‘maddening,’ I knew I correctly answered the question,” wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division’s housing section — the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.
The graduate from Regent — which is ranked a “tier four” school by US News & World Report, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place — was not the only lawyer with modest credentials to be hired by the Civil Rights Division after the administration imposed greater political control over career hiring.
And how is it, exactly, that all these Regent grads got plum jobs in the administration? It wasn’t a coincidence — Bush picked Kay Coles James, the dean of Regent’s government school, to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management — essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch
“We anticipate that many of our graduates are going to go and be change agents in society,” Regent Law School Dean Brauch said.
We’re already seeing the results.