Book: Dirty politics of conservative compassion

Kuo also writes that the White House was more concerned with the appearance of doing something.  He says the faith-based office wasn't even set up during the 2001 transition after the end of the Clinton administration.  It was not set up until Mr. Bush took office and Karl Rove gave a transition volunteer less than one week to roll out the entire faith-based initiative. 

The volunteer asked Rove how he should do that without a staff, without an office, without even a plan.  According to Kuo, quote, “Rove looked at him, took a deep breath, and said, ‘I don‘t know.  Just get me a f-ing faith-based thing, got it?” unquote.  After that, it was easier to push faith-based legislation rather than faith-based funding, because legislation was a cheaper way to show the president was supposedly doing something.

Bush assistant Margaret Spelling, now the secretary of education, asked Kuo for legislation and said she didn‘t care what kind.  “Any kind of faith bill would do,” he writes. 

When the office got a substantive bill backed by every senator from Santorum to Clinton, the only hold-up was a green light from Josh Bolten or Andy Card.  They did not get the green light.  What kind of bill did get such a support?  Kuo writes, “The White House liked the issue of religion hiring, not because it was a real issue affecting real charities, but because it was divisive, and that made good politics.” 

“Tempting Faith” also suggests that this Bush White House would use anything for politics.  Anything.

JERRY FALWELL, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT:  I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians, all of them who tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.” 

After those comments, Kuo asked whether Karl Rove still wanted to let Jerry Falwell attend the national service.  Even while Ground Zero was still burning, politics still mattered.  Rove let Falwell attend, as long as he stayed off-camera. 

While others wept, Kuo writes, Falwell laughed about something with another conservative leader.  Spotting Barbara Bush, Falwell remarked on how frumpy she looked. 

Even choosing the new faith-based director, Jim Towey, was an issue of politics.  Rove put out the word that, for Towey to get the job, he had to get as many cardinals as he could to vouch for him.  He did, and he got the job.

Kuo freely admits that he, too, is no stranger to the politics of conservative compassion.  He writes he spent much of the ‘90s lobbying for it.  But at the time, he says the top Republican donors had no interest in fighting poverty.  They had other enemies in mind and told Kuo they would provide lavish funding if the target was not poverty, but instead the Clintons.

And Kuo would know about this.  By the early ‘90s, he was already a conservative insider, part of Jack Kemp's think-tank, Empower America.  To help bring about the 1994 Republican revolution, Kuo writes that he and his team taught more than 600 candidates how to run for office:  by blaming President Clinton for the nation's sad state of affairs at the time. 

Kuo writes that they tried to ignore the fact that Clinton had only just started in office after 12 years of the administrations of Presidents Reagan and Bush. 

Together with fellow Christian Mike Gerson, now Bush's top speechwriter, Kuo writes that he wrote political speeches designed to appeal to religion audiences, even when the speakers did not want to give those speeches.  Jack Kemp, for one, removed religious values language from a speech he was to give to the Southern Baptist Convention.  So instead, Kuo writes, Gerson and Kuo snuck in a few phrases that evangelicals would recognize but laypeople would not. 

Kuo writes that it was a code that would continue to be used in speeches over the years by politicians, including John Ashcroft, Ralph Reed, Bob Dole and George W. Bush. 

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