Presidential Testimony: Listening to the Heart of George W. Bush

Physician of my soul... You have forgiven me my past sins and drawn a veil over them, and in this way you have given me happiness in yourself, changing my life by faith and your sacrament. But when others read of those past sins of mine, or hear about them, their hearts are stirred so that they no longer lie listless in despair, crying “I cannot.” Instead their hearts are roused by the love of your mercy and the joy of your grace, by which each of us, weak though he be, is made strong, since by it he is made conscious of his own weakness. And the good are glad to hear of the past sins of others who are now free of them. They are glad, not because those sins are evil, but because what was evil is now evil no more.

What does it profit me, I ask, also to make known to men in your sight, through this book, not what I once was, but what I am now? I know what profit I gain by confessing my past, and this I have declared. But many people who know me, and others who do not know me but have heard of me or read my books, wish to hear what I am now at this moment, as I set down my confessions. They cannot lay their ears to my heart, and yet it is in my heart that I am whatever I am. So they wish to listen as I confess what I am in my heart, into which they cannot pry by eye or ear or mind. They wish to hear and are ready to believe; but can they really know me? Charity, which makes them good, tells them I do not lie about myself when I confess what I am, and it is this charity in them that believes me.

— St. Augustine, Confessions, Book X, Chapter 3.

During a 1999 Republican Presidential primary debate in Iowa, the candidates were asked which political philosopher or thinker had the most significant impact on their political beliefs. George W. Bush, as you might recall, quickly responded, “Christ because he changed my heart.” Bush’s answer sparked much conversation. He was not alone that night in proclaiming Jesus as his most influential political philosopher. Gary Bauer also celebrated Jesus as political thinker, emphasizing the teachings found in the Beatitudes. Bush, however, offered little in the way of explanation as to why Jesus merited that status — or perhaps I should say little evidence that might be understood by a non-born-again audience. In response to a question asking for clarification about the political philosophy of Jesus, Bush merely said, “Well, if they don’t know it is going to be hard to explain…. When you accept Christ as the Savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life. And that’s what happened to me.”[1] If Bauer offered a political vision that could be readily understood by believers and non-believers alike, Bush, as Maureen Dowd put it, sought to create an exclusive “Christ club.”[2] Bauer offered an answer that can be conceived both politically and philosophically, while Bush provided an answer that registers only on a personal and religious level.[3] Bush may indeed have been “sending a political signal” to a particular audience about the centrality of his faith in Jesus, but his answer poses a significant (and perhaps overly familiar) problem for politics: “Is the introduction of religion the end of political conversation?”[4] In this essay I am going to answer this question with a strongly worded, “sometimes, but not necessarily.”

My intention in this essay, then, is to explore a portion of the American public that considers itself to be “born-again Bible-believing Christians”[5] — a portion of the population that is generally considered a befuddling problem for academics, especially academics in political science. For academics, the problem posed by the Bible-believing population is further a pressing problem given the early and adamant “faith-based” sentiments and policies emerging from the new administration. From Lieberman...