I’m pleasantly surprised that former White House special assistant [tag]David Kuo[/tag]’s new book, “[tag]Tempting Faith[/tag],” is generating considerable attention from the political world. I have not yet read the book, but the excerpts I’ve seen suggest that it’s filled with revelations that should give the president’s religious-right allies, and other supporters of the so-called [tag]faith-based initiative[/tag], pause.
For example, in an excerpt in Time, Kuo noted the cynicism with which Bush approached the initiative. To set the stage, Kuo had just returned to work after having been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and he seemed to be losing his patience a bit with a White House with a disingenuous interest in “compassionate” conservatism. [tag]Bush[/tag], [tag]Kuo[/tag], and Karl [tag]Rove[/tag] met in advance of a discussion with faith-based leaders to discuss how much money the administration was making available to [tag]faith[/tag]-based groups.
I glanced over at Karl and turned to look the President in the eye. “Sir, we’ve given them virtually nothing,” I said, “because we have had virtually nothing new to give.” The President had been looking down at some papers about the event, but his head jerked up. “Nothing? What do you mean we’ve given them nothing?” He glared. “Don’t we have new money in programs like the Compassion Fund thing?”
I looked again at Karl. He seemed stunned at what I was saying. “No, sir,” I told the President. “In the past two years we’ve gotten less than $80 million in new grant dollars.” The number fell shockingly short of the $8 billion he had vowed to deliver in the first year alone. […]
I told the President, because of new regulations there was technically about $8 billion in existing funding that was now more accessible to faith-based groups. But, I assured him, those organizations had been getting money from those programs for years and it wasn’t that big a deal.
“Eight billion in new dollars?” he asked.
“No, sir. Eight billion in existing dollars where groups will find it technically easier to apply for grants. But faith-based groups have been getting that money for years.”
“Eight billion,” he said. “That’s what we’ll tell them. Eight billion in new funds for faith-based groups. O.K., let’s go.”
Bush, Kuo, and Rove then went to the meeting with pastors, who listened politely about the initiative. Bush left, and the ministers asked Rove where all this new money was coming from, since it seemed not to exist in any budget anywhere. Rove vowed to “get back to them.” He was lying.
The response to John DiIulio’s “Mayberry Machiavellis” was just as disconcerting.
DiIulio, the first head of Bush’s faith-based office, said publicly that the White House suffered from “a complete lack of a policy apparatus.” He said everything — literally every policy decision — came through Karl Rove and the WH political machine, which is why the “compassionate” agenda fell by the waste side.
After DiIulio comments were published, the White House scrambled to prove him wrong. Bush asked if DiIulio was right, leading the president’s aides to discover that they were spending $20 million less on families in need than the government was spending before Bush took office. (The number was hidden from the president.) Then-deputy chief of staff Josh Bolten called an urgent “compassion meeting.”
“We gotta get some compassion stuff out there now,” Margaret [Spellings] said. “What have we got?”
I wanted to laugh, but it was far more sad than funny.
“Well, I have an idea,” the other domestic policy staffer said. “I hear chronic homelessness is a problem. I read an article where there are thirty thousand homeless people in America. Maybe we could do something to help them.”
“I think it is just a few more than that actually,” I volunteered. The actual figure at the time was over 750,000.
“What else have we got?” Margaret asked.
A few people from the “compassion meeting” came up with a few half-hearted proposals, which Bush then included in his State of the Union address. Kuo said, after the speech, “they promptly disappeared.”
Of course, this isn’t just a fascinating peek behind the curtain; it’s also a chance to see the far-right pushback in action. Dobson and company have already begun going after Kuo, despite the fact that he’s doing them a favor, and the vitriol is getting worse.
In the latest attack, an article entitled “David Kuo: An Addition to the Axis of Evil,” Jason T. Christy, the publisher of The Church Report (and once nominated to head the Bush-friendly Christian Coalition), lobs many of the accusations that Kuo predicted:
“Don’t be fooled by Kuo; he is someone who has been described as a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’ Don’t let his smarmy tones and pouty eyes fool you. Having done campaign work for several Kennedys, having contradicted himself and his own letters, Kuo is being used to try and prop up the liberal left, to breathe life into lifeless campaigns and his master literary work is a mere smokescreen. Questioning the faith and motivation of this administration is wrong.”
For the record, Kuo was a liberal in college who interned for Sen. Ted Kennedy. He soon after became an evangelical antiabortion activist who took Bill Bennett as a mentor. Kuo has written speeches for Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, and was a domestic policy adviser to then-Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R-Mo.).