Commenting on Pat Robertson’s latest outrage may seem like the blogospheric equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, but I will try to add a bit of value by offering a theological perspective on the Rev’s persistent habit of asserting that God Almighty will smite anyone who disagrees with Robertson’s views on society and politics. Certainly every religious person of any faith tries to do God’s will, and to humbly try to discern it in all public and private decisions. But it’s a peculiarity of fundamentalists (again, of every faith), and of the Christian Right in particular, to embrace their own interpretations of God’s Will as clear, certain and infallible, and to attribute a willful disobedience towards the divine order to anyone who might happen to hold a different interpretation. In the end, this tendency leads its practitioners dangerously close to the position that they literally speak for God on any matter they decide to talk about. In Pat Robertson’s case, he’s gone well over that line, and apparently thinks his judgments and God’s are identical, which to my point of view is self-idolatrous and indeed blasphemous. I’ve speculated at length elsewhere that this fanatical certainty that God has a clear position on every secular matter–and that dissenters know this and are consciously in rebellion against God–reflects the dire spiritual danger today’s cultural warriors have risked by providing religious sanction to the entirely secular conservative agenda they have chosen to emphasize over every task. After all, if they’re wrong in thinking that the clear lesson of Holy Scripture for today’s Christians is to criminalize abortion, demonize gay people, and reverse the changing gender roles of recent centuries, then they are the kind of “false prophets” that Holy Scripture warns us all to fear and reject, right? In that sense, Robertson stands out less for the breathtaking arrogance of his pronouncements, than for his remarkable lack of discretion in broadcasting them regularly.Still, you have to wish he’d finally retire and share his views less broadly, if only because of the scandal he so often brings to his faith and his country. (Wikipedia has an excellent summary of his fatuous fatwahs over the years).When I first heard that the Rev had breezily announced Ariel Sharon’s stroke was a direct Act of God, like many Christians, and many Americans, my first thought was please shut up. Or, to quote one of the preachers in the repertoire of the late Richard Pryor: “How long? How long? How long–must this b—s— go on?”

One of the most outrageous aspects of the recent Bush administration counter-offensive aimed at reversing the president’s bad poll ratings has been an effort to recast him as a brave, tough and far-sighted Commander-in-Chief in the tradition of Harry S. Truman (Condi Rice, in particular, has been promoting this wildly revisionist argument).Over at TPMCafe, G. John Ikenberry demolishes this false analogy in considerable detail, mainly in terms of Truman’s strategy for dealing with the post-World-War-II challenges facing America, which couldn’t be much farther from Bush’s strategy in the war on terror. Please read it all.I would, however, like to supplement Ikenberry’s analysis by pointing to the radically different leadership styles of Truman and Bush.Truman famously said of the presidency that “the buck stops here.” Bush’s aversion to admitting mistakes or taking accountability for his administration’s actions is so extreme and notorious that he actually gets praise for his occasional “mistakes were made” admissions, invariably abstract rather than specific, that perhaps he isn’t infallible.Truman quickly and decisively fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur as military commander in Korea, at a time when MacArthur was far more popular than the president himself. Bush cannot bring himself to fire Donald Rumsfeld, whose departure would not cause a ripple in public opinion, and would be quietly celebrated throughout most of the armed forces.Truman was of course a fiery partisan, but he also cooperated with Republicans whenever possible, especially in foreign policy. Bush pretends to be “above party,” while in practice (with the sole exception of the No Child Left Behind legislation) treating Democrats who don’t simply surrender to him as nonentities to be ignored if not destroyed.I would have to guess that this campaign to make Bush “the new Truman” is based on the superficial identification of the two presidents as simple, resolute and non-reflective men who never worried much about criticism.Truman, of course, was a man from a very humble background, who did not attend college. Yet his administration built virtually the entire complex superstructure of multilateral organizations and policies, economic as well as diplomatic and military, that guided the West throughout the Cold War and beyond.Bush, the ultimate child of privilege, with a presidential father, a prep school education, and degrees from two Ivy League universities, has actively cultivated a non-reflexive attitude, and is “visionary” only in the imagination of his speechwriters.I obviously don’t expect the Bushies to advertise their boss as the reincarnation of some more likely figure such as Warren G. Harding, but still, this Truman Show does not pass the laugh or smell tests.

As Kevin Drum and the L.A. Times have both pointed out today, the Abramoff scandal is pointing big red arrows at a much broader and more politically significant scandal: the conscious, deliberate GOP effort to make corporate lobbyists a cog in the Republican political machine through a crude pay-for-play arrangement known as the K Street Project. The K Street Project, which was basically the product of the evil genius of Grover Norquist (one of Abramoff’s deputies, along with Ralph Reed, in Casino Jack’s salad days with the College Republicans, and a key figure, also along with Reed, in Abramoff’s efforts to launder his tribal-shakedown dollars), has been operationally under the control of Roy Blunt–also known as the Acting Majority Leader of the U.S. House–and Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. That’s why I was fascinated to learn today (in a Byron York report via Matt Yglesias) that Senate Republicans decided a couple of months ago to anticipate the Abramoff fallout by developing a lobbying reform initiative of their own, and delegated this task to none other than Rick Santorum.Now I can certainly understand why Ricky, who’s in an uphill fight for re-election this year against Bob Casey, would want to burnish his non-existent “reform” credentials. But Lord-a-mighty, for this guy to pose as the champion of lobbying reform would be a classic example of a bad guy returning to the scene of the crime. So I say, bring it on, Ricky. Your identification with Republican “lobbying reform” will do wonders for the Democratic effort to connect the dots and explain why the Abramoff scandal is but the tip of the iceburg in the ongoing scandal of the GOP’s descent into corruption and influence-peddling as a way of life.

Looking back at my holiday posts, I realize I did nothing but whine for two weeks (Eeyore was, after all, a donkey). So enough of that. Like many of you, no doubt, I caught up a bit on my reading, and also got a few new books for Christmas. By far the most enjoyable holiday read was an advance copy of Michael Kazin’s new biography of William Jennings Bryan, A Godly Hero. I’ve written an extensive review of the book for The Washington Monthly‘s next issue. But suffice it to say that I recommend it highly, especially to those self-styled populists of the Left and Right who claim parts of Bryan’s heritage while ignoring aspects of the Commoner’s thinking that don’t fit into their own ideologies. Like a lot of sports junkies, I asked for and received the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia under the Christmas tree. And I suspect a lot of said junkies shared my reaction to the tome: it’s fun at first, but gets boring pretty fast. Sure, it’s a handy reference book for resolving arguments, but who really wants to sit around reading box scores of every bowl game in history; statistical summaries of every season; or team schedules from time immemorial? The essays that begin and end the book are pretty sketchy, and the individual team histories generally read like they were written by Sports Information Directors for the schools involved. Probably the most interesting general tidbit is the section in each team history about how they acquired their nicknames and mascots. In other words, it’s a fine book to keep in the W.C. I always get at least one theological book for Christmas, and this year’s selection was Kevin Irwin’s May 2005 offering, Models of the Eucharist. It’s a useful if somewhat frustrating study: useful because Irwin exhaustively examines the truth underlying a variety of historical and contemporary understandings of the central ritual of (non-evangelical) Christianity; frustrating because the book’s design as an official Roman Catholic textbook gives it a didactic tone that undercuts its scope of inquiry. Still, if you’re interested in this topic, Irwin’s book belongs on the same shelf with Dom Gregory Dix’s seminal The Shape of the Liturgy, and the playful post-Vatican II classic, Thomas Day’s Why Catholics Can’t Sing.In an earlier post I lifted a quote from another book I finished reading over the holidays: Eamon Duffy’s Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. Duffy manages to pull off a credible and readable history of two thousand years of papal development in just 317 pages, and is particularly good on the tangled legacy of the Renaissance Popes and the internal Church tensions that produced the First Vatican Council and the doctrine of papal infallibility. Given his unhappiness with the authoritarian strain of Pope John Paul II’s reign (the book was published in 1997), you have to wonder if Duffy will produce a revised edition assessing the significance of Joseph Ratzinger’s election as Benedict XVI. (Disclosure: I’m a big fan of Duffy’s work on the Tudor Reformation, especially The Stripping of the Altars. And one of my favorite memories was the opportunity I had a couple of years ago to sit next to Duffy at High Table at Cambridge’s Magdalen College, while I was there to participate in a panel discussion of neoconservatism). The last book I undertook as 2005 waned was a golden oldie which I retrieved from a dusty bookshelf at home: Gore Vidal’s 1973 novel, Burr.Anyone who just thinks of Vidal as a cranky conspiracy theorist, a media hound, or the purveyor of tawdry novels like Myra Breckinridge, should definitely read Burr and its equally delightful sequel, 1876. These books stand alone as historical fiction of the highest order.

Well, since my last post I’ve experienced(1) a chipped front tooth;(2) the news that Independence Air, which my family depends on for direct air travel from Washington to Savannah, where my disabled father-in-law lives, is shutting down;(3) the possible death of my car, which lost power on I-95 just north of Fredericksburg, and was loudly sounding an apocalyptic blooga-blooga-blooga by the time I reached Arlington.(4) the Sugar Bowl (I refuse to use the corporate adjective), wherein my Georgia Bulldogs came back from a 28-0 deficit early in the first half and then lost 38-35 after West Virginia pulled off a fake punt late in the game. All in all, my holiday season has been a rolling fiasco, but like the Dawgs, I am determined to make a comeback, and if things keep going wrong, I will remain bloodied but unbowed.

I fully intended to do a year-end thumbsucker post reviewing the baleful consequences of George W. Bush’s re-election, and the increasingly obvious dysfunction of his Republican Party. But it’s hard to blog when you’re wheezing and coughing and subsisting on NyQuil and antibiotics. I rang in the New Year sound asleep, and today I am hiding from a cold, rainy day in Central Virginia (as is the fog-shrouded Blue Ridge a few miles from here) and awaiting tonight’s Sugar Bowl.In this state of mind, any thoughts I have about the upcoming year are dominated by the depressing realization that Bush’s second term has three more years to run, accompanied by my Eeyore-like fears about Democrats’ ability to walk (make major gains next November) and chew gum (set the table for victory in 2008) at the same time.I can only hope that in a day or two I will feel better, the mountains will reappear, the world will look more promising, and the Donkey Party will kick off this new year with an intelligent strategy for reclaiming power.

Sorry for the lack of posts, but the last few days have been absorbed with the blessed chaos of an extended family Christmas involving complex human and zoological logistics, travel across the Southland, screwed-up delivery orders of presents, and in my own case, an attack of acute bronchitis. I only have one political point to make today: adding to the chaos, I’ve been trying to sign up my mother-in-law for the Medicare Rx drug benefit, which her current insurer is forcing her to undertake under penalty of massive premium increases. And as anyone who’s dealt with this particular beast can tell you, the new program is about as easy to navigate as The Name of the Rose. I know a fair amount about Medicare, and health insurance generally, but still, I’m terrified that I’m making serious mistakes. I cannot imagine what this is like for anyone without internet access or a rudimentary knowledge of the new system. I gather millions of seniors are depending on their pharmacists for guidance, which would be fine except for the fact that a number of drugstore chains are sponsoring or cosponsoring plans themselves, creating all sorts of conflicts of interest. And knowing the extent to which Karl Rove and company originally thought of this thing as a surefire political winner, it’s almost inconceivable that the administration has let the new benefit become such a nightmare–inconceivable, at least, until you remember its handling of Hurricane Katrina and the reconstruction of Iraq.I know some Democrats get angry at me for continuing to stress the Bush administration’s incompetence, instead of attributing every bone-headed move to corruption or pure malice. Lord knows I’ve written a lot about Republican corruption, and its ideological roots. But in the end, a gigantic and debt-ridden federal government that cannot even give away new benefits without creating a virtual parody of both public- and private-sector bureaucracy has blurred the lines between incompetence and malfeasance to the point where it’s a distinction without a difference.

There’s something about Christmas that tends to make people nostalgic for the past. That’s ironic, from a Christian point of view, since the Feast of the Nativity is the quintessential celebration of the radically New (preceded, in most Christian traditions, by the season of Advent, the quintessential time for looking forward).Still, the association of Christmas with simpler and better times probably has something to do with the seasonal upsure of Cultural Right whining about the good old days of the 1950s or 1960s or even later, when Christians could celebrate this holiday without worrying about church-state separation or the sensibilities of Jews, Muslims or other, heathen folk.As it happens, I ran across a quote today that nicely encapsulates the belief in the hellward trajectory of society shorn of official Christian trappings:

God has been driven out of public life by the separation of Church and State; he has been driven out of science now that doubt has been raised to a system…. He has even been driven out of the family which is no longer considered sacred in its origins….

Want to guess who said that, and when? James Dobson? Richard Land? Bill O’Reilly? Last year, or maybe last week?Actually, it was Giuseppe Melchior Sarto, better known as Pope (and Saint) Pius X, circa 1903, as quoted in Eamon Duffy’s Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes.

Via an email from the Georgia Democratic Party, I learned about an excellent idea for a seasonal gesture by a certain politician who has long proclaimed his fidelity to Christian principles. Yes, I’m talking about Ralph Reed, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, who recently announced his regret that he harvested millions of dollars in Native American Casino money as a key player in Jack Abramoff’s elaborate scam to chase off competitors to the tribes he was ripping off.

If Ralph really regrets his decision, shouldn’t he give the money to a worthy organization? He could give it to Gamblers Anonymous, or Ralph could give his tainted Abramoff money to Native American charities, like Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). If he truly feels remorse about working with people now under federal investigation and indictment, he should donate the funds so that he doesn’t profit off this relationship that he now says he regrets.In addition to making the charitable contribution, Ralph could tell us all how he did not know the source of millions of dollars funneled to him — even with emails made public by investigators that appear to directly contradict his claims of ignorance. Ralph has expressed regret and issued general denials, but he hasn’t explained how it all fits together.Please take a moment and send Ralph an email calling on him to give the millions he took in from “Casino Jack” to a worthy organization. Also take a minute to check out some of Ralph’s other nefarious actions at http://www.therealralphreed.com/ And while you’re doing that, please check out the page that lets you forward the website to 10 of your friends, and help us spread the news.

I’m glad to see Georgia Democrats are working so hard to make sure Ralph gets into the proper spirit of the season.

In all the furor over the last few weeks about the various nasty provisions in House and Senate budget reconciliation bills, most of the attention was paid to a major rise in interest rates for student loans, higher copayments and tighter eligibility rules for Medicaid, and all sorts of shenanigans associated with reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid.But with relatively little notice, our Republican buddies have also sought to pull off a back-door maneuver that could unravel the consensus supporting welfare reform. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has the details, but here’s the big picture: Since the original welfare reform law of 1996 entered its last year in 2003, there’s been a deadlock in the Senate over the administration’s demand that work requirements for welfare recipients be increased without additional money for child care assistance, and the Democratic position (most notably promoted by Sens. Evan Bayh and Tom Carper) that the tighter work requirements will fail without the child care resources that make it possible for single mothers to go to work (a smaller group of Democrats oppose increased work requirements altogether),So now the GOPers are using the budget bill, which can’t be filibustered, to simply impose their position on welfare on the Congress and the country, even though some of these provisions were not in either the House or Senate version of the bill.When you consider the intense and free-ranging debate that accompanied the enactment of welfare reform in 1996–the tense back-and-forth maneuvers between the Republican Congress and President Clinton, who vetoed two versions of the bill, and the acrimonious national debate on the subject–it’s shameful that Republicans now want to make large changes in one of the most successful initiatives in recent history in the dark, with little or no debate. The fact that the changes they are insisting on are bad public policy adds injury to insult.