Here are a few excerpts from New Book Reveals How Faith is Like a Covert Operation for the Bush Family.
Faith has always been a special commodity for politicians. It is not only essential to have or appear to have it, but that it be of the right variety--especially if you're thinking of running for president. For nearly two centuries, you could be pretty much any religion you wanted, as long as it was mainline Protestant. John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who identified respectively as Roman Catholic and Quaker, stretched the definition of acceptable presidential faith, followed soon after by Jimmy Carter, the first evangelical Christian president, whose political rise prefigured and catalyzed the wider engagement of conservative evangelicals in politics and, as it happened, the rise of the religious right.
... what was a starchy, Episcopalian heir to a blue-blooded Yankee political pedigree to do? And what of his reckless, apparently non-religious, playboy son? These were the intertwined questions faced by Vice President Bush and George W. in the 1980s as they planned Poppy Bush's run for president in 1988--and W.'s political future.
Under [Doug] Wead's tutelage, Poppy would learn the ins and outs of the evangelical world. But Poppy and W. had a problem in common. Baker writes that they knew that W.'s "behavior before becoming governor [of Texas in 1994] his partying, his womanizing, and in particular his military service problems--posed a serious threat to his presidential ambitions. Their solution was to wipe the slate clean--through religious transformation." Oh yeah. And there is one more thing. The story of how W. procured an illegal abortion for his girlfriend in Texas before Roe v. Wade. (see page 145-147 of Family of Secrets)
This is substantiated in part by four reporters whose stories were not published, but who shared their "experiences and detailed source notes" and even tapes with him. Two Bush pals took charge of arranging the abortion go to the hospital and who went to the hospital to inform her that he would not see her again. All of the names are named. Certainly as a candidate who was seeking to appeal to conservative evangelical, anti-abortion constituencies, this would have been a high hurdle to overcome.
The Dubious Conversion of George W. Bush | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
The Dubious Conversion of George W. Bush | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
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