Neo-Catholic Michael Novak, having dissed the Pope and just war theory, has already proclaimed his love for our “Tom Sawyerish” president. Now, with Kid Kristol, he vaults back to Father Abraham as the model for Bush idolatry.
As a theologian, Novak might be wondering, with such a divine leader as Bush to redeem us, why Christ went through all that trouble 2000 years ago. But Christ didn’t have the benefit of reading Novak, Jaffa, and Podhoretz on the deification of presidents. Alas.
CS Lewis draws the wonderful picture – I believe it is in The Great Divorce -- of the intellectual in hell who mutters to a heavenly visitor that that he must stay in hell to pursue work on his new book, “What a mature Christ would have taught, had his life not been cut short at the young age of thirty-three.” Neocons and Neo-Catholics obviously think they have the answer in G.W. (“God’s Will”) Bush.
Excerpt: “I was thinking during the inauguration how painful it would have been to hear John Kerry as our new president. Bush gave an inaugural address that calls to mind the vision of Abraham Lincoln: It is without question the greatest presidential reflection since Lincoln on the meaning of liberty to the nature of the United States.”