{"id":1759,"date":"2013-04-11T08:22:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T14:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2013-04-11T08:22:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T14:22:11","slug":"david-kuo-i-will-miss-this-voice-in-american-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2013\/04\/david-kuo-i-will-miss-this-voice-in-american-politics.html","title":{"rendered":"David Kuo: I Will Miss This Voice in American Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>David Kuo died last week after a ten year battle with brain cancer. He was a trusted voice from Washington, beloved by many evangelical square pegs \u2013 myself included. David Kuo helped me to snip the final cords that held me to the Republican party \u2013 either party for that matter \u2013 encouraging me to allow my Christianity to define me completely. I will miss hearing from him. You could tell by the way he wrote that Kuo was a good guy. I get the feeling he was a lot of fun to be around & I\u2019m bummed that I never got to meet him.<\/p>\n

Today I\u2019m posting a few things written about Kuo since his death. Joe Klein\u2019s tribute at TIME is especially touching so I\u2019ll start there. All three of these short articles are worth a full read.<\/p>\n

From Joe Klein at TIME<\/a>:<\/p>\n

David was asked to write speeches for Bush\u2019s 2004 campaign and he agreed to write only one, Bush\u2019s speech to the NAACP. He could not bring himself to write speeches about war, or speeches that attacked the Democrats. (Years earlier, at a White House prayer breakfast, he had approached\u00a0Hillary Clinton<\/a>\u00a0after she \u00a0offered a moving prayer and said, \u201cI spend my days trying to defeat you and your husband, and sometimes that becomes personal anger, and that is wrong and I will never allow myself to do that again.\u201d)<\/p>\n

And then, one evening, driving home from a party, David had a seizure on Rock Creek Parkway. The car veered into oncoming traffic, but somehow his incredible wife, Kim, managed to maneuver onto the opposite verge. That was the tumor announcing its presence in David\u2019s brain\u2014even then offering the hope of survival against all odds, while showing David and Kim the brutal face of death. I cannot say enough about Kim\u2019s courage and support over the last 10 years. She refused to be beaten. She and David had two children (David has two others by a previous marriage). David and Kim were going to live their lives, build a family, despite the cancer. They were going to make this thing disappear\u2014and the cancer cruelly tantalized them. It went away. It actually disappeared once, twice. But it always came back.<\/p>\n

I spent Easter Sunday with David in hospice. He couldn\u2019t talk and had difficulty swallowing. We held hands for seven hours. He could understand what I was saying and he would squeeze my hand in response to my recollections of our times together\u2014the red convertible, the Bible study, the times he asked me\u2014a man old enough to be his father\u2014for advice, the times, the many times, he gave me comfort and support and inspiration.<\/p>\n

David always closed every conversation by saying, \u201cI love you, Joe Klein.\u201d I think he probably said that as often as my wife has. And so I must close this by saying one last time, \u201cI love you, David Kuo.\u201d And I will always love you, and I will always have your enormous heart and spirit to guide me. And I will miss you, and so will the world, especially the least of these.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Michael Shear at NYTimes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cNational Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as \u2018ridiculous,\u2019 \u2018out of control,\u2019 and just plain \u2018goofy,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Mr. Kuo wrote in a memoir, \u201cTempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.\u201d<\/p>\n

In interviews after he left the White House, including an\u00a0appearance on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in 2006, Mr. Kuo said Mr. Bush was a \u201cgood man\u201d but faulted him as having failed to live up to his promise of \u201ccompassionate conservatism,\u201d which he said could have helped the poor.<\/p>\n

\u201cConservative Christians (like me) were promised that having an evangelical like Mr. Bush in office was a dream come true,\u201d Mr. Kuo wrote in an\u00a0opinion article<\/a>\u00a0in The New York Times in 2006. \u201cWell, it wasn\u2019t. Not by a long shot. The administration accomplished little that evangelicals really cared about.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the prologue to his memoir Mr. Kuo wrote that his experience in government had given him clarity about the limits of politics. \u201cI have seen what happens when well-meaning Christians are seduced into thinking deliverance can come from the Oval Office, a Supreme Court chamber or the floor of the United States Congress,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey are easily manipulated by politicians who use them for their votes, seduced by trinkets of power, and tempted to turn a mission field (politics) into a battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI took sides on issues that don\u2019t have much to do with my faith,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAbove all, I let the passions of politics distract me from what matters in life.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From E.J. Dionne at W.Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Kuo was no less committed to capitalism in principle. But his faith was religious. He was one of the original \u201ccompassionate conservatives<\/a>,\u201d and he remained one to his dying day.\u00a0As his friend Joe Klein of Time magazine put it<\/a>: \u201cHe was a man of faith, rather than of religion. He called himself a Follower of Jesus. Many of his friends had ministries, but David\u2019s church truly had no walls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kuo\u2019s passions were engaged less by honoring the contributions of the successful than by demanding attention to the suffering of those left out of the grand capitalist party \u2014 among them the 35 million Americans \u201cat risk of hunger every day\u201d and the million people \u201creleased from prison every year with virtually no one to help them productively re-enter society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026Kuo ruffled feelings after he left the White House when he sharply criticized the workings of President George W. Bush\u2019s faith-based initiative. This disillusionment led to his suggestion of a Christian political fast in his 2006 book, \u201cTempting Faith<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Kuo was allergic to the idea of enmity and spent much of his time pleading with the left and the right to learn from each other. He wanted liberals to understand the power of religious faith \u201cas a catalyst for radical change in people\u2019s lives\u201d and the importance of non-governmental charitable organizations. He urged conservatives to admit that \u201cgovernmental programs can do \u2014 and have done \u2014 good,\u201d citing as evidence food stamps, Social Security and Medicare.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Kuo died last week after a ten year battle with brain cancer. He was a trusted voice from Washington, beloved by many evangelical square pegs \u2013 myself included. David Kuo helped me to snip the final cords that held me to the Republican party \u2013 either party for that matter \u2013 encouraging me to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[524,531,536,532,533,153,534,535],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-kuo","tag-e-j-dionne","tag-george-w-bush","tag-joe-klein","tag-michael-shear","tag-new-york-times","tag-time","tag-washington-post"],"yoast_head":"\nDavid Kuo: I Will Miss This Voice in American Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"David Kuo died last week after a ten year battle with brain cancer. 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