The faith-based Presidency

Here's quite an unnerving article at dailyKos summarizing a longer piece from the weekend's New York Times ("Without a doubt") about Bush's sense of having a mission from God (which thus explains his unwillingness to let facts interfere with his faith in his own direction).

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Those of you who think that Bush's approach to religion goes beyond the piety of former Presidents are not alone. This article looks at the relationship of American Presidents to religion through history and finds a real change in the current administration. As they put it,

The key difference is this: Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have spoken as petitioners of God, seeking blessing and guidance; this president positions himself as a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world. Most fundamentally, Bush’s language suggests that he speaks not only of God and to God, but also for God. Among modern presidents, only Ronald Reagan has spoken in a similar manner -- and he did so far less frequently than has Bush.

I find this terrifying. With a messianic level of certainty about your own mission, what other principles won't you throw aside? Why should you be constrained by a pesky elected of government? Why shouldn't it be right to concentrate power as much as possible, so that you can fulfill your historic aims (which can't be other than correct)?

(links via kos and other sources; all emphasis mine)

Update: leave it to Internet commerce to capitalize on anything. You can get T-shirts that proclaim your membership in the "reality-based community" . . .