Bill Miller on God and George W. Bush. Miller thinks that the real story is not that Bush is a puppet of crafty Christian groups bent on installing a Christian theocracy, but that Bush and the Republican Party are bent on making the pious in America an integral part of the Republican Party base.

However labeled, Mr. Bush's faith entails a direct relationship between the believer and God. It does not provide a pope, or any other intermediate authority figure. Nor does Mr. Bush's religion provide a very specific playbook, except the Bible, and among born-again Christians that book can be regarded as anything from a collection of inspirational poetry to a literal recipe for life. (Mr. Bush gives no sign of being among the literalists.)

Is that supposed to be a comfort? Should I be soothed by the notion that the POTUS doesn't necessarily think that the story of Elisha and the She-Bears is literally true? But, being a Bible-believing Christian, Bush must agree that the message should be taken seriously: if children tease bald men, the Lord will kill them in a ghastly manner. This part was relevant, too:

Mr. Bush startled Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the devout Muslim who now leads Turkey, by declaring: "You believe in the Almighty, and I believe in the Almighty. That's why we'll be great partners." It is probably not entirely irrelevant to our international relations that Tony Blair is, as one British columnist put it, "the most overtly pious leader since Gladstone," while Jacques Chirac of France and Gerhard Schröder of Germany are adamantly secular. Mr. Schröder was the first German chancellor to refuse to end his oath of office with the customary "so help me God."

Good for Schroder. Some people get separationism and some don't. And those who do are often at a political disadvantage: Jimmy Carter, while personally a very devoutly religious man, understood separationism and ended his speeches with "Thank you and good night," rather than, "And God Bless America," like everyone else. And he was a one-termer. Ronald Reagan smiled while he raped the country, and so shamelessly pandered to his hard-core religious political base that he has become a Republican deity and his actions are a blueprint for political success. The most impressive thing about George W. Bush is that he actually seems to be a worse president than Reagan. If you had suggested, in 1988, that someone could damage the US more than Reagan... And this is interesting:

As for the enduring notion that Mr. Bush takes his instructions from the organized Christian right, it misses a much more interesting story: as an independent political structure, the Christian right is dying. For one thing, the organizations that hit their stride in the 1980's have waned. The Moral Majority is long gone. The Christian Coalition is withering. Bombastic evangelical power brokers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have aged into irrelevance, and now exist mainly as ludicrous foils. Their attempt to turn the war on terror into a religious war — Mr. Robertson called the prophet Muhammad "a wild-eyed fanatic," and Franklin Graham, the preacher son of Billy Graham and a friend of Mr. Bush's, described Islam as "evil" — afforded Mr. Bush a chance to play ecumenical healer by rebuking them.

I'm not sure the rebuke wasn't more obligatory and half-hearted than an example of Bush's steadfast inclusionism. The Christian right dying seems like a good thing, but as the article notes

...many local activists have gravitated into the Republican Party as county chairmen and campaign consultants. Once an independent force hammering at the president and Congress, they are now an institutional part of the party base.

Great. Now they're going to be operating at the grass roots level, where I can't see them as well. Fabulous.