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Dubya: God Is My Press Secretary

Timothy NoahPosted Monday, Oct. 16, 2000, at 3:55 PM ET

In an interview with Beliefnet.com Editor in Chief Steven Waldman, George W. Bush was asked whether his prayers have ever been answered. Let's go to the transcript:

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Beliefnet: Have you ever felt like a specific prayer of yours was answered?

Bush: Gosh, that's a very good question. I really don't pray for, you know, "Gosh, I hope I get 48 percent of the vote in the so-and-so primary." That's not a prayer I offer up.

I have [felt that my prayers were answered]. I have. There's some situations where I've prayed for inner calm, and I felt calm.

Beliefnet: Around a particular event?

Bush: Well, for example, big press conferences at times. You'll notice, for example, I will bow my head just quietly just before I walk up to the mike. There are a lot of situations in which I find myself where there is a lot of pressure and, you know, a lot of attention, and those are moments where you just need to be clear thinking and resolute and calm.

Chatterbox sees three possible conclusions one might draw:

God doesn't exist. That would explain why Bush's extemporaneous speaking remains so clumsy and ill-informed. (Chatterbox takes the minority view that Gore creamed Bush in the second debate--mainly by showing Bush to be clueless about what's going on in Texas.)
God does exist, but He doesn't waste His time helping out George W. Bush at press conferences. (Wouldn't that be as much a waste of His time as helping Bush win "48 percent of the vote in the so-and-so primary"?) This may be because He is a Democrat, or it may be because, like Washington Post Editor Len Downie and debates moderator Jim Lehrer, He thinks it's improper to take sides in any electoral contest.
God does exist, and He does help out Bush in press conferences, but there's only so much even He can do.

Chatterbox, an atheist, favors the first view. He leaves it to believers to quarrel over the second and third.

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments from The Fray:

Columns like this are one reason Republicans get elected. People who don't live in Washington, New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco often believe in God, as hard as that might be for members of the intelligentsia--you know, the chattering classes--to comprehend. And they don't much like being ridiculed for it. This column is particularly gratuitous. You'd think praying for calm and inner peace is what religion ought to be about--whether you personally believe it or not--rather than praying for the miraculous turning of natural or worldly events. Whatever gets George W. Bush through the night is fine with me, and none of my business--and none of Timothy Noah's, either.

--Daniel Berger

(To reply, click here.)

I believe that Chatterbox is correct. God can only do so much to help Dubya get beyond his seemingly overwhelming verbal disadvantages. We can only pray that God will make sure that he's soundly defeated in November. Otherwise, we'll all be saddled with his gaffes and insensitivities for four long years.

Let us pray.

--Angel

(To reply, click here.)

Chatterbox states that the view he holds is "God doesn't exist." In order to know this, Chatterbox must clearly be all-knowing (omniscient); Chatterbox must have a complete and perfect knowledge of all things both physical (universal) and metaphysical (that which is outside of the physical, such as thought), whether they be past, present, and future. Again, Chatterbox surely is omnipresent, having been everywhere, or "being everywhere", since the premise that God doesn't exist anywhere requires that his presence is nowhere.

The only conclusion is that Chatterbox must then be God (a being attributed with omniscience and omnipresence).

Hence, Chatterbox believes in God, only that God is Chatterbox

--Ron

(To reply, click here.)

(10/20)

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