The Divine Right of Bush


During the Presidential debates of 2000, W said something that slipped by most of us, but passed on a small piece of political code to those who would follow him. When asked to name a philosopher who had influenced him, Bush said, "Jesus, because he changed my heart." Eight years later, we all know he said it. And how did Gore answer that one? I don't remember -- do you?

If Jesus did truly change Bush's heart, I can only guess at how cold, cruel and unfeeling W was before the change. After the change, George could still start an unnecessary war -- a war that would leave chaos, death and destruction on a grand scale in its wake, all to steal and control the oil of another country. After the change, George could still give a nod to torture without any second thoughts. After the change, George could still stand back and allow poor people to drown and die of neglect in New Orleans. The human suffering that weighed so heavily on the heart of Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament Gospels doesn't seem to concern George of Connecticutt very much.

But George had no real interest in showing how Jesus had changed his heart. He had a message to pass on to those who might follow him: "God has chosen me to lead you." Again, if the Almighty Ruler of the universe picked GWB, I have to wonder at the choice. God didn't pick the smart guy -- the one who understood many of the serious problems facing the nation and the globe, and who had some clues for what to do about them. No -- out of infinite wisdom, God picked the C student who has trouble putting together a complete sentence in his native tongue. Really?

George, of course, didn't actually come out and say God had chosen him -- he simply implied it. But by stepping into the oval office by whatever means got him there, he set a new bar for the next Republican candidate. So while Democratic candidates brought out ideas for health care, the economy, education and the like, Republican candidates answered questions about the Bible. A Democrat running for President probably only needs to deal with those trivial issues, but a Republican candidate might need to show that he too has been chosen by God to lead the country.

Looking at the other side of the coin, though, if God has chosen you to lead the country, maybe you don't need a plan for the economy or health care. I guess if God picks you, He'll also give you instructions as you go along to deal with all the simple little stuff.

Or not, as in George's case. Leaving God out of the equation, no one could be too surprised that the C student hasn't crafted any brilliant solutions for a health care system in crises, or that the priveleged, self-centered third generation son of super-wealth felt nothing for the poor starving folks on the Gulf Coast. Why, it's almost as if God doesn't speak to George at all! Now what if?

You could probably guess that like every other number he plays, George copped his little "picked by God to lead" riff from somewhere, but where? His father didn't play that one, and neither did Ronnie. And you won't find it in your old TV clips of Nixon and Kennedy, or your dusty volumes of Lincoln and Jefferson. That riff, just like W's preferred method of torture (waterboarding), dates from a time in old Europe that history writers like to call the Dark Ages, and it goes by the cute little alias The Divine Right of Kings.

And how does this Divine Right riff go, exactly? Well, it says that if you make it to the top, it doesn't matter how many bodies you stacked up along the way, before or after, because God is on your side, or else He wouldn't have let you get there. If you could make it to top dog, you had the divinely-given right to do anything you wanted or needed to do. For anyone else, it might be a crime and a sin to kill and to steal, but a king had the divine right to do it.

God made me do it? John Gotti and Vito Genovese would have liked those odds. Or anyone else with a brutal outlook on life that hasn't moved beyond the Dark Ages. And if a little bit of power corrupts a little bit, a little more power corrupts a little more, and a lot of power corrupts a lot, I wonder how much absolute power corrupts... (A brief aside: In light of the flack Obama got a few months ago over whether or not he copped a couple of speech lines, I think I should admit that I'm not the first person to figure out this "power corrupting" bit.)

Interestingly enough, someone looking clearly at the actions of a king exercising his divine right might reasonably think that the king is not acting in a very "divine" manner. In fact, the historical record of European kings might lead a reasonable thinker, whether religious or not, to an odd bit of math -- the equation seems to show that the more a king claimed his divine right, the less "divinely" he acted. This equation still holds true today. And why is it so often the case that when a political leader claims to do God's work, that work includes so much killing? Does God really want all those people dead?

And so it happened, during a period of time historians call The Age of Reason, that a group of mostly European colonists in North America reasoned that an English king named George had no special divine connection, and might even be getting his ideas from a place in his own head close to the border of madness. These colonists fired a shot heard around the world, and started a revolution against the king and his divine right. And despite the fact that he had torture on his side, claimed to have God in his corner as well, and certainly did have one of the strongest military forces on earth at his command, King George lost. It seems that claiming to have God on your side in a war hasn't always worked too well, with the Germans in WW1 and WW2 being a couple of the more recent cases.

The American Revolution was then very clearly a rejection of the divine right of kings. The government those rebellious colonists crafted for themselves and their children gave the rights not to the king but to the people. They crafted a constitution where the rule of law was meant to cover everyone as equally as possible, from the top dog on down. Now GWB has tried to say that he doesn't have to answer to the law because he answers to a "higher power." You might not have heard this riff before, because no one has played it out on the North American continent in well over 200 years, but it's not new. In fact, the whole sad tune has been played out many times on this third stone from the sun, and I don't think we need to hear it again.

5/23/08