The faith-based thing
David Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction is the rare political tell-all that is actually better than its pre-release quotes suggest. Not only for its glimpses of powerful people that are sometimes funny (Sandra Day O'Connor teaching Kuo to fly fish) and sometimes frightening (Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson saying he prefers benevolent dictatorship to democracy), but because Kuo comes off as a sincere believer.
Kuo believes that Republicans were right to seek to help the poor by aiding the "little platoons" of social-service providers, many of them faith-based, already doing heroic work. Religious programs that are effective in turning lives and neighborhoods around should not, he says, be fettered by government bureaucracy and secularist objections and should be given government money to further their work. When Kuo first met George W. Bush, he thought he had found a Christian leader in the tradition of Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr.—someone ready to empower the poor over the objections of old-style wealthy Republicans. He went to work for Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Kuo is now a jilted lover. But not a spiteful one. He makes no derisive judgment of Bush and maintains a soft spot for his old boss Ralph Reed. But he tells how the White House repeatedly denied the faith-based initiative funds and access to Bush—except when election time rolled around.
