THE WONDERFUL, EXTRAORDINARY GEORGE W. BUSH
(After the responsive reading, which is about thinking POSITIVE…)
Okay, now let’s talk about the wonderful, extraordinary George W. Bush… On this Presidents’ Weekend, I’d like to hear one really good thing about our president from somebody in this Fellowship. Who will start? Does anybody know a good story, a good idea that he’s had, a noble gesture – just one – that you can relate to all of us to get us started today? And it can’t be a good story with a cynical punch-line. Catherine e-mailed me one of those to “help” me with this talk today. Thanks a lot, Catherine. It was hysterical, but I couldn’t use it. No, it has to be something that you could tell in the middle of a roomful of conservative voters and everybody would nod approvingly.
(if no takers) He’s our President. Fifty-one percent of American voters in the last election thought he was worth standing in line and voting for. Surely one of us can say something nice about him. (pause; go on)
Three weeks ago, I was visiting my mother-in-law in Sun City Center, Florida, an over-55 retirement community about 30 miles south of Tampa. Lots of golf carts, two huge club houses, four golf courses, and a million activities designed for retired folks who have extra money to spend. Ninety percent of Sun City Center voters voted for George W. Bush, which was very good news for me because I was just at the beginning of my search for “wonderful and extraordinary” things that I could say about our President this weekend. I thought, “This is George Bush’s base; these are the people who can help me.”
So, first thing, right after we arrived, I sat down with my 81-year-old mother-in-law and asked her to name three “wonderful and extraordinary” things about George W. Bush. She didn’t even hesitate: “He’s faithful to his wife, he’s loyal to his friends, and he does what he says he’s going to do.”
Knee-jerk reaction – I don’t think the words were even out of her mouth, and my brain went NEGATIVE. Attack Mode: “You’re kidding. People are daily dying by the score in Iraq – your own grandson is over there -- and you voted for him because he’s faithful to his wife and good to his friends???” (pause) I am very glad to report to you today that I didn’t actually SAY those things to my mother-in-law. I’m sure I presented to her a dumbfounded look, and I was undoubtedly “leaking” my negativity all over her, but I didn’t say it.
I think it was at that moment that I actually realized how very difficult this exercise was going to be for me. In terms of the Bush Administration’s policies on what feels like virtually everything, I am in utter disagreement. As I stared speechless at my mother-in-law, I realized that I didn’t have a single good thing that I could say about our president. Not one. I also realized that fact went against everything I am and everything I’m trying to be in this life. (Please review this morning’s responsive reading….)
So it took me a couple of hours of real soul-searching and real effort, but I took Jeff’s mother’s words to heart, and I decided that the three things she named – fidelity, loyalty, and doing what one says one is going to do -- really were good things and things that I do value. I might not yet be able to say that all of them are of ultimate importance when I vote for presidents, but I could certainly see them in George W. Bush. It was a very shaky, very feeble start.
Part of the problem – and I could identify this right away -- was I had spent significant parts of 2004 working on a campaign to elect a different person to the office of president. It has taken me a little while to assimilate the fact that my man lost and President Bush will be our president for the next four years. However, November 2nd was three and a half months ago, it’s probably time I moved through my grieving process and found for myself a better place in terms of the reality of the man and his policies.
So, as I began to prepare for this Presidents’ Weekend talk, the first thing I decided that I needed to do was stop thinking in “election year rhetoric” – which, like all elections, cast the opponent as a lying, thieving, conniving scoundrel whose EVIL agenda, if allowed to be enacted, would eventually destroy the world. A number of people in this room would probably agree with me that that rhetoric is REALLY hard to walk over, particularly when you firmly – with all your heart and soul – believe that it is true. But the fact is that on November 3rd, Democrats did not go out and commit mass Hari-Kari. From that, we can extrapolate that most of us still have some hope for the future and – deep inside – believe that the values and policies we hold most dear can be salvaged and carried forward.
One of the values that I personally hold dear is something Jeff and I taught our kids. We acknowledged to them that there are indeed difficult people in this life. This came as no surprise to our four children; they had, after all, each other. And they had Jeff. And they had me. Difficult people, we told them, are a fact of life and put here on this earth to teach us lessons in love and acceptance.
Since we were a Christian family during the years the kids were growing up, we – okay, I – put considerable energy into using Jesus as the model for good relationships. “Turn the other cheek.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “If someone asks for your coat, give him your cloak, as well.” And the crowning pieces: “Love your enemies” and “Do good to those who persecute you.” It, of course, took almost no time for my wonderful, bright children to find and gleefully show me the gospel accounts where Jesus didn’t get along very well with his family, his neighbors -- and he even argued pretty regularly with his disciples. (Wretched kids; they were born UUs, but nobody told us.)
But it remained my contention that if you took Jesus’ teachings seriously, love truly can conquer all and create that Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus was always talking about. It is my deep, abiding conviction AND experience that love works. Forgiveness changes lives. Compassion makes all things bearable. Who would know better than the people in this room how often I fall short of living my life according to Jesus’ precepts, but I believe in them, because I’ve seen what they can do.
Last week, for those of you who were here, Harold Gant gave a wonderful talk on “The Power of Positive Religion.” He lamented the lack of conservative thinkers (and, I suspect, voters) in this Fellowship; and he exhorted all of us to think more inclusively and work to create larger spaces in our lives for those with diverse ideas and opinions.
“…those with diverse ideas and opinions…”
In other words: difficult people.
Then Nancy Cook (who was here with her wonderful guitar and music), made a comment during the talk-back afterwards that, I think, resonated with a number of us. Speaking, I’m sure, from some of her Buddhist background, she said – I wrote it down on my bulletin so I’d be sure to quote her correctly – “You can’t go into any kind of negotiation without the parties first being able to agree on at least one thing.” In other words, walk into a room full of conservative thinkers and start the discussion with something along the lines of, “That jerk, George Bush, and his stupid policies,” and I guarantee there will be no discussion, there will be no building of consensus, and there will be no ultimate agreement. There may, however, be blood...
So keeping Nancy’s words in the back of my mind, this week I called my cousin Greg, a staunch Bush supporter, with the idea that I would feel him out for some good words about George. Early in our conversation, I told him that I was very pleased and impressed to learn from my reading that the President had included a 15.5-percent increase (approximately $32.7 billion) in line items for the State Department, foreign aid, embassy construction around the world and – my favorite of his programs – his global AIDS initiative. My conservative cousin, from whom I had never heard a critical word spoken on the subject of George W. Bush, replied, “Yes, those are good things, but I’m really ticked about his stand on stem cell research.” How about that? It worked. Nancy was right. By me stating some kind of approval – finding something good to say about the man – Greg didn’t have to spend any of his usual energy defending the President and was free to move into other places where we might agree. Serendipitously – not by any design at all, but simply because I showed up with a positive attitude -- it turned out to be, by far, the best and, I think, most productive political discussion that Greg and I have ever had. Go figure.
“Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.”
Part of the difficulty I’ve had giving up my anger at the President is a sense that it somehow makes me weaker in my beliefs. This, of course, is ridiculous. My beliefs and values and my commitment to my causes remain as strong as ever. But I think we are sometimes afraid that if we don’t constantly express our disgust and anger at those in power who act against our values, it will in a way give them greater permission to proceed with their agendas. This is illogical; it is not our anger that makes us powerful. It’s the rightness of our ideals; it’s the principles that we hold to. Are we a righteous and angry people – as the song in our hymnal says – who project our righteous anger for the betterment of society? Or does our anger simply turn off those with whom we might otherwise hold productive and intelligent conversation? I submit the latter – from experience.
I’ve tried it both ways. I got further being positive.
As I told my growing children, if, in the course of living, you come upon a person about whom you cannot say a SINGLE NICE THING, it probably says more about you than it does about the person. I don’t know about you, but I just haven’t run across that many evil sociopaths in my life. Most people – the vast, vast, VAST majority – have wonderful qualities mixed in with their others. I believe it is what we choose to perceive in people that creates our reality of who we think they are. Based on the fact that George Bush and I value different things in different ways, I decided that he was Evil Incarnate, and so he was. It was the sum total of my reality of him. Was it the whole truth about him? No. How could it be? I only allowed myself to know the negative. So much for my “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Killed that principle.
“Love your enemies.” “Do good to those who persecute you.”
So back to the President on this Presidents’ Weekend. Are there OTHER good things can we say about him? Wait. Let’s qualify that further: Are there other good things we can SINCERELY say about him? (On the theory that it’s good for our souls…)
Before we go there, I have to tell you: this was one of the hardest talks I’ve ever had to prepare for this Fellowship. For the last three weeks, I have COMBED the newspapers, my three weekly magazines, and the Internet for every good thing I could find about this guy. “Time” magazine named President Bush its “Person of the Year.” When the issue arrived in my post office box the last week of December, I couldn’t even open it, I was so furious. However, after three weeks of asking every conservative relative and friend I know “Name three good things about George W. Bush,” I find that I can now pick up the magazine and I can read the articles in it with a calm and more open mind.
Another benefit to all this: I no longer get that hot feeling when I see the President’s picture. I am able to listen intently and with a sense of open-mindedness to his words when he comes on TV or the radio. I actually find good and positive news articles about him in the paper so – best of all – I no longer have to avoid the known conservatives in my life because I have this whole arsenal of good things that I can now say about “our president.”
Would you like to hear a couple of Bush things that I’ve read that really impressed me? Or would you like to go directly to our discussion?
Okay, they’re short; but I’m going to ask that you listen to them simply for what they are and not feel compelled – as I did with my mother-in-law – to go “Yeah, but the NEGATIVE part of that is….” Just hear them and know them to be one side of the multi-faceted person that is our president. A person of – if absolutely nothing else – “inherent worth and dignity.”
Ready?
Did you know that the budget that President Bush sent to Congress includes $50 million for training death-penalty defense lawyers AND it includes $1 billion in aid to states for DNA testing? Quoting the President: “Because one of the main sources of our national unity is our belief in equal justice, we need to make sure Americans of all races and backgrounds have confidence in the system that can provide justice. In America, we must make doubly sure no person is held to account for a crime he or she did not commit. People on trial for their lives must have competent lawyers by their sides.” I know this money is related to the President’s support for the death penalty; but leaving that aside and letting these budget items stand on their own, this represents a very tangible and positive good. Many people – mostly the poor -- will ultimately benefit.
After his reelection, George Bush said, “Sometimes you’re defined by your critics. My presidency is one that has drawn some fire, whether it be at home or around the world. Unfortunately, if you’re doing big things, most of the time you’re never going to be around to see them to fruition, whether it be cultural change or spreading democracy in parts of the world where people just don’t believe it can happen. I understand that. I don’t expect many short-term historians to write nice things about me.”
It’s not “Give me liberty or give me death,” but it could as easily have been said by some of the other presidents that we honor on this day. You can’t accuse this guy of thinking small or lacking vision.
Bush Communications Director Dan Bartlett says, “People think during elections, ‘What’s in it for me?’ and we thought that expanding democracy in Iraq where death and destruction occurred nightly on national news was not high on voters’ list.
“Yet,” he says, “every time we’d have a speech and attempt to scale back the liberty section, the president would get mad at us.” Sometimes he would simply take his black sharpie and write the word “freedom” between two paragraphs to prompt himself to go into his extended argument for America’s efforts to plant the seeds of liberty in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.”
And, I would just end on a personal note by saying that, despite the naysayers and the folks who told him that people in Iraq would be too scared to come out of their houses and that the election should be postponed and that the Sunnis weren’t going to show up and all the violence in some areas would invalidate the results and on and on and on, our president, George W. Bush declared that there would be a national election in Iraq on the 30th of January of this year; and, by gum, it happened and sixty percent of eligible Iraqi voters voted! I can’t help it. That just impresses the hell out of me.
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