Tempting Faith and Partisan Jabs

In Tempting Faith, former
White House operative, David Kuo, has written an interesting book, much
of it maddening, some of it disappointingly partisan.  

Until I had read his book,
what I knew about David Kuo I learned in this
story (Alan Cooperman,
who wrote that piece for the Post this weekend, has another good one in today’s paper).  He has
immense personal courage, demonstrated in his battle against a brain
tumor and given that he had to know what the White House would do if
he wrote this book.  This unfortunate story in the gossip column of
the Washington Post
underscores that the White House is going after him in a typically underhanded
and unfortunate way. 

Not just the White House takes
hits from Kuo in the book, and regrettably some of his shots at Democrats
were inaccurate.  For example, on page 196, he writes, “Late
one evening, Daschle’s office called and said they could attach the
[faith based charities] bill to another bill and get it done in hours.” 
The White House response: “Not now, maybe next year.”  Yet,
not ten pages later Kuo writes that Daschle would not agree to a separate
version of the same bill because, “apparently he didn’t care about
the poor during an election year.”  

That short sentence confirms
that Kuo, still living and working Washington, has not totally given
up the town’s ugly ways.  Regrettably, some commentators appear to have taken the bait in the
book, arguing that Democrats were willing to play politics with the
poor because it advanced their agenda.

What has been covered as newsworthy in the
book – that Kuo
uncovered cynicism and misuse of faith in the White House – is not
particularly newsworthy.   For example, take a look at this story from several years ago. It details
how a Catholic adviser to the White House provided Karl Rove with a
letter from sympathetic Catholic theologians arguing that the Iraq invasion
was consistent with Catholic teaching on Just War Theory, a position
at odds with the Vatican position at the time.  He provided the
letter, the story asserts, in exchange for influence on AIDS policy
and on appointees to political boards.  Church teaching on these
issues is not like trading cards to be swapped.   

Nevertheless, we owe Kuo a
debt of gratitude because of his bravery to write this story and because
he reminded us that Republicans also believe there is a role for government
in helping the poor – and that is welcome news.  That means we
can all hope not just for an isolated Compassion Agenda, as Kuo’s work in the White House
was called, but for compassion underlying everything the government
does.  We can long, in fact, for a return to The Common Good.