Do you have a cite that some priest had regular trade talks with the President?
I see your point. I still think it was politicking. You’re free to disagree, but if you want to see a real fundamentalist in the White House, elect Rick Perry. Then, IMHO of course, you will understand the difference.
The whole “gee shucks” cowboy thing was an act.
I do wonder about his constant speech problems though. At some point you have to wonder, like when he makes a complete spectacle of himself and even the audience starts to laugh at him. There’s a fine line between appearing to be being a folksy, down to earth dude and an idiot. His pre-POTUS debates were already referenced. Maybe the stress just really got to him.
I recall anecdotes that his whole inner circle laughed at the true believer fundies. Wasn’t that the basis of an entire book by an Asian gentlemen who was on the inside? About how they played the religious community to the hilt with the whole “ZOMG TEH GAYS R ATTACKING” in 2004? I think he was on Bill Maher peddling his wares. Sound familiar to anyone?
This is precisely why Chirac’s account is credible (btw, he didnt hate Bush but he sure thought the US had elected a total, and dangerous, fool).
Chirac didnt use that bit of info during the way more antagonistic phase that followed Bush vaguely trying to get France on board. Showing the world Bush was completely misguided, and blinded by medieval faitytales would have come in handy at that time, and would have vindicated France’s position. Yet the story got out only after both Chirac and Bush were out of office. Sounds more like Chirac holding on an interesting info till both concerned parties are not active anymore (very Gaullian, in a way).
The Chirac story also calls into question Bush’s intelligence (in both discrete senses of that word, although I have to assume here that the intelligence Bush received from the CIA would be better than his own reasoning in this instance.) Wouldn’t you presume that before taking such a tack with a foriegn leader, Bush would have asked the CIA, “Hey, is this Chirac dude a believing, devout Christian, and how do you think he’d react to some rambling gibberish about Gog and Magog and like that?” Way I figure, either the CIA gave him some bad info (unlikely), or Bush never asked (likelier), or the CIA told him “Ix-nay on the Ist-chray” and he decided to roll them dice anyway (my bet.)
Bush claimed god told him to attack Iraq. That would seem pretty religious to me.
I wonder if he heard voices ?
A secondhand account from a vaguely important Palestinian official recalling Bush’s remarks years later, which is unsupported and indeed contradicted by much more relaible accounts of Bush’s words and actions at a hundred other times. Well, I’m convinced.
I don’t have a cite for this, but I recall reading an article by a key Republican that GWB was chosen by some of his fellow Governors to run for President precisely because he was the man without ideas. !!
Reviewing the Governors, so-and-so was pro-Choice so was out, so-and-so had raised taxes, so was out, et cetera. By elimination they ended up with the Man under the Empty Hat.
The stem cell lines that were allowed were defective, near useless ones; which is why they were allowed, no doubt.
Ok, I never thought the day would come when I would be defending W, but that’s baloney. Everything I have read about the stem cell says that W’s instinct was to allow unlimited funding, the compromise was a sop to his base. His sister die of leukemia when he was young which is something that all observers agree affects him even today, in his book he even says hay he thought that this was something that could have saved her.
Wow, that makes me think even worse of him. To go against his own conscience, against what he knows is right, for the basest political purposes…
I was more sympathetic to him when I thought he was just ignorant.
Well mind he’s President not Emperor. I generally rate GWB favorably as a President (he’s not in my top 5 or anything), and while I don’t agree with limitations on stem cell research when it comes to matters of spending Federal dollars GWB essentially has to compromise. If all politicians were strict absolutists who never accepted deals that didn’t give them 100% of what they believed in nothing would get done. This is how the Tea Party wing of the GOP was acting during the debt ceiling crisis.
I also think GWB was under the (mistaken) belief that the existing stem cell lines were going to be very useful for future research, unfortunately that was not the case.
People seem to abandon all common sense when discussing GWB and now Barack Obama. Bush was and never will be considered a great President, he will likely be one of the more influential Presidents, yet I have always thought his record (like anyone else) should be examined on its own merits. If you dislike him, he did enough to satisfy you, without resorting to trite and cliched statements about his apparent lack of intellect and smarts (which are kind of hard to reconcile with his success politically) or being a fundo.
He was throughout his life simply handed positions of political and corporate authority, including the Presidency, despite his consistent failures. His “success” in politics is due to being born to a rich and connected family. Not because of any personal abilities he had.
Well, he did take a couple businesses down til the Arab oil barons saved him.
In intelligence I would say he is above-average-you have to be smart to be President and he could be articulate at times. And he is a faithful Methodist but not a fundist in the accepted definition here-he accepts the basic tenants of Christianity but he certainly is no Jack Chick.
No Romney if he doesn’t survive is going to be for his flip-flops on issues not for his “Mormonism”, that some people here is convinced is the reason. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::dubious::dubious::dubious::dubious:
No, you don’t have to be “smart to be President”. You can be an idiot or senile and still be President.
You seem pretty sure of this assertion, but you are likely wrong.
To get the nomination, Romney has to fight his way through the Republican primaries. The Religious Right has spent the last 35 years assiduously inserting themselves into the Republican organization at the precint and state levels. In a general election, the people upset by Romney’s religion might amount to a rounding error, (although it is probably much higher), but in the primaries that he needs to win to build financial support and garner the delegates to make it through the nominating process, the Religious Right is very powerful, and a very large number of them consider the CoJCoLDS to be a “cult” and will not vote for him under any circumstances.
The number of people who would “never” vote for a Mormon is “only” about five to seven times the number who would “never” vote for a Catholic or a Jew, but that group of people makes up nearly one third of the Republican base. That is a very high barrier to overcome.
George W. Bush is a moderately observant Methodist.
Michelle Bachmann is a Lutheran.
How they’ve been painted as members of some kind of fringe “Fundie” sects is beyond me.
I imagine it’s because of some of the views they hold (Bachmann on gays, for example) and things they’ve said (didn’t GWB claim that God told him to invade Iraq?).