Barry Lynn could hardly contain himself. “This plan is sinking faster than the XFL,” chortled the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State on March 12. Two days later, staffers united for getting their boss in the newspaper had produced some more punchy sound bites for Lynn: “We’ve just finished round one, and the Bush team is staggering back to their corner. The White House threw only a couple of punches and the folks in Bush’s corner are already reaching for the smelling salts.”
Hysterical boasting usually masks fear. The truth is, liberal secularists like the good Reverend Lynn see the interest and passion generated by President Bush’s faith-based initiative. They sense that something big is happening. They know their best bet is to strangle it in the cradle before the White House has had time to get fully organized, and before the American people understand what’s at stake. A few of the president’s more foolish allies have provided them some ammo. But deep down, and not even so deep down, Barry Lynn and his colleagues are afraid. They’re right to be.
Beginnings are hard, especially important ones. Confusion over the program’s details, contradictory statements from members of the administration, lack of coordination with outside allies — all of these marked the first few weeks of Bush’s signature initiative. But none of that is nearly as important as this fact: George W. Bush understands this is his signature initiative. Tax cuts are good, and missile defense is important — but both are traditional, Reagan-era agenda items. If this president is to have a distinctive legacy, it’s likely to be that he brought an end to decades of government hostility to religion and inaugurated a neo-Tocquevillean era in which religion and liberty, pluralism and faith, are no longer at odds.
In fact, beneath the surface disarray, the director of the initiative’s White House office (and WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor-on-leave) John Dilulio has been getting things organized. Task forces are combing through the regulations of five cabinet departments — Justice, Labor, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services — to find regulatory barriers they can remove. Efforts to begin mobilizing the private sector are under discussion. (Four of the ten largest corporate givers in America explicitly rule out donations to faith-based organizations, regardless of their demonstrated effectiveness.) The charitable tax credit for non-itemizers is teed up for speedy passage on Capitol Hill.
The only area where there is uncertainty and delay is in the expansion of “charitable choice” — the principle, already embodied in several federal laws, that religious organizations should be able to compete equally for federal grants to achieve policy goals such as drug rehabilitation and job training. Given the confusion about how to implement existing law, and the genuine difficulty of necessary line-drawing, a certain amount of caution is in order. So the administration is taking an appropriate amount of time to get it right. It shows no sign of backing down. It admirably refuses to bow before the idols of the naked public square and continues to insist that success in social policy should no longer be scorned when it is associated with faith-based efforts.
The implications of the faith-based initiative are large and varied. Not everything can be accomplished quickly. But what needs to begin now is public education. The administration needs to organize itself and mobilize its allies to explain itself to everyone — from state and local social-service providers to grass-roots religious conservatives; from policy wonks to politicos; from inner-city African Americans to exurban evangelicals. And the administration needs to begin explaining to the American people its broader intention to relink liberty to morality, rights to faith.
One man is key to this whole effort: George W. Bush. He doesn’t need to rush out to give lots of major speeches right now. But he does need to let everyone know, inside and outside his administration, that the initiative is of fundamental significance to him. If the president keeps the faith, and insists that his administration follow his lead, an important change in our culture and politics could follow. And then it will be Barry Lynn who really is reaching for the smelling salts.
William Kristol
