Washington National Cathedral

Lloyd: Well, happy New Year and welcome back to the Sunday Forum as we begin our second term of exploring the relationship between faith and public life. To launch this new series, we are delighted to have with us someone who comes straight here, or almost straight here, from the inner sanctum of power in Washington. Someone who has helped to shape so many of the policies and the language of the current administration, and is very much involved now in re-imagining the way the Republican Party should lead its life.

Michael Gerson is the Roger Hertog senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He’s the author of a recent book called Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don’t). He’s also a columnist for the Washington Post regularly, and also a contributor to Newsweek magazine.

Many of you will know Michael mostly, I suppose, from his earliest incarnation in Washington as a speechwriter and top policy aide to President George W. Bush from the campaign trail days of 1999 to July 2006. Michael, it’s wonderful to have you with us today.

Gerson: It’s wonderful to be with you, Sam.

Lloyd: Well, let’s start with how you seem to have gotten started, at least in the big time, getting connected with President Bush, back when he was Governor Bush. I understand it happened when he was running for President in 1999, and you heard from him back then. Tell us a little bit about that.

Gerson: Sure. I was at the time a senior editor at US News and World Report covering politics. I had been asked to go and cover the announcement of Governor Bush’s exploratory committee for the magazine, and I got a call from Governor Bush to meet him here at the J. W. Marriott Hotel here in Washington. And I went up to his suite, and the first thing he said to me was, “This isn’t an interview. I’ve read your stuff. I want you to write my announcement speech, my convention speech, and my inaugural.”

And he wasn’t even a declared candidate at that point. But he had an infectious confidence. And he was also one of the few Republicans in the field at that point that was developing the ideas that came to be known as compassionate conservatism, which was trying to use conservative and free-market methods particularly to promote the work of faith-based and community institutions to meet social needs on addiction and homelessness and other areas.

So that impressed me about him. And so I picked up my family and we moved to a two-bedroom apartment in Austin, Texas, for a couple years for a campaign. And went from there.

Lloyd: Sounds like he was very decisive and you were very decisive. You were ready to go.

Gerson: Well, I had to ask my wife first. I had gotten the presidential bug in ’96 when I had been a lower level speech writer for Bob Dole, before I’d done journalism. And I loved the journalist world and was well treated. I did interesting stories on things I cared about, and thought that was what I was going to do with the rest of my life. But when an opportunity like that comes up, there were only at that point about six of us down in Austin at the very beginning of the campaign. And to see it from the beginning was a great experience.

Lloyd: Let’s jump into one of the famous events of that campaign, the moment when then-Governor Bush declared in a caucus debate that Jesus was his favorite political philosopher, a statement that drew a fair amount of attention and even disagreement and skepticism and ridicule along the way.

But you say in your book that says something important about him, and it was in fact not so strange a statement after all. Give your read on that.

Gerson: No, not in my experience. First of all, I’d been involved in those debate preparations; it had never come up. This was very close to the surface of his own spirituality. If you were to ask him to summarize his political philosophy, he would often talk about doing unto others as you would want them to do to you, and basic kind of commitments of the Gospel. And it was a distinctive approach in a lot of ways, one that came out of his own experience, his own experience of grace. As someone who at the age of forty—his family had been worried about him, as somebody who drank too much, and had not had a serious approach to life, and then have an intensification of his own religious experience.

I always found that the president did not cynically use his faith, but it was always very close to the surface. And he was sometimes derided, as though, particularly in that case, the Gospels had no political influence. I don’t believe the Gospels dictate public policy in the sense of missile defense or tax policy or other things, but they certainly inform a view of human life and dignity, of the absolute value of the individual, that had tremendous political influence in Western history.

Lloyd: So you say in your book there actually is an undergirding political, not a full vision, but a set of political precepts or guiding lights coming out of Jesus’ own…

Gerson: I think that’s absolutely true. If you look at the Greek and Roman world, they had a very advanced concept of justice, but very little conception of individual rights, particularly when it came to slaves and women. And Christianity challenged that and played, I think, an important political role in the development of the West. So I don’t think that Christianity dictates a certain political ideology.

In fact, I think that Christianity at its best has stood in judgment of all ideologies. It’s something different. But I do think it has political consequences, particularly in its anthropology.

Lloyd: Some of the talk about President Bush and his relationship with religion, and one of things we want to talk about, is how those—religion and public life—intersect in creative and healthy ways and maybe more dubious ways. One of the things that comes up is the way President Bush has used rhetoric. And I assume you had something to do with rhetoric sometimes that have very strong religious overtones. Phrases such as, on the anniversary of 9/11, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.” And lines such as, “There is a power, a wonder-working power in the goodness and faith and idealism in the American people.”

Do you see anything at all troublesome or complex about evoking specific, directly spiritual, and theological insights in the ways that the president has spoken to a public and civil society?

Gerson: I’ll tell you, Sam, I think there’s a real danger whenever political figures and nations identify their own purposes with the purposes of God. That they essentially interpret their policies, programs, and approaches as representations of divine purpose. I think that that’s a real problem.

But I will say that in the reading of the history of American rhetoric, those kinds of references are part of the richness of our rhetoric. When Abraham Lincoln talked about “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he didn’t invent that phrase, of course. And it was not a reference in the Scriptures to North and South. It was a reference to Satan, okay? But that reference had a resonance. Even though it had a lesser meaning, it had a resonance because of its greater meaning.

Lloyd: It can get tricky though, can’t it with something like “the light shines in the darkness.” We all know that from the prologue to John when he’s talking about God’s light shining into the world. And now it’s being transferred to American’s light shining in the world. Do you see anything tricky in that?

Gerson: Well, that’s why I used the Lincoln example. I mean he’s making a reference essentially to the divine realms, the conflict between good and evil, when he talks about “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Martin Luther King, when he talks about a “promised land of freedom.” I mean “the promised land” was a divine promise to the people of Israel. Now, but he was talking about it in terms of fulfilling the constitutional hopes of a beleaguered minority in America.

So, you know, there are many figures in American history that have taken biblical concepts and applied them to historical circumstances—with the recognition that this is a lesser meaning, okay? It’s not the original meaning. But I think American rhetoric would be really impoverished if you were not able to do that.

Now, I think that you can go up to a certain line and go over it. Theodore Roosevelt, when he spoke to the Bull Moose Convention, by saying, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.” That is probably going pretty far, when you talk about these things.

But you know, when Ronald Reagan talked about “a city on a hill,” that of course didn’t come from the Pilgrims. It came from the New Testament. And it was really… the reference there in the red part of the New Testament, is not to America. But the term had a resonance to the Pilgrims and throughout our history to the Pilgrim founders, because we’re a Biblically literate people, with an understanding that these things have a lesser meaning. I think if we were to lose that, we would lose something quite important.

Lloyd: As you write in your book about your years in the Bush administration, something over five years I think, is that right? You comment on many of the struggles and questions and issues that came up, but you also talk about your own particular passions and the things that energized you most in your time in the White House. Would you talk a little about, amidst all the speeches and all the work, what were the one or two things that you cared most about in your time there?

Gerson: Well, I think my best experience at the White House was probably sitting in late 2002 in the Oval Office and watching the president of the United States make the decision to approve the emergency plan for AIDS relief. Fifteen billion over five years, fifteen focus countries, the first large-scale effort to deal with this issue with any nation in the world, particularly on the treatment side, because treatment had been discounted. You know, that these lives were essentially lost.

And you know in the twentieth century, in other rooms, in other government meetings in Berlin and in Beijing and in Moscow, you know, there were other calm meetings where decisions were made to result in the death of millions of people. And I have a tremendous historical sense that being in that wonderful room, being in the Oval Office and seeing the president of the United States make a decision that would save the lives of millions of people.

Lloyd: You became quite a voice within the White House for making a major response to global poverty and suffering around the world, some version of maybe compassionate conservatism, but we’ll get to heroic conservatism in a minute. It sounds sometimes like you were an embattled voice, or at least a lone voice in the administration. Is that true?

Gerson: Well, I think it’s not an easy case to make in the Republican coalition, because there are people that are much more influenced by libertarian thought which, you know, is less focused on social justice issues. There’s no question.

But I tell those stories in the book for a specific reason. Because when I could get those decisions—I and others—could get those decisions, to the president of the United States, he was the largest supporter of these ideals.

Lloyd: The struggle was to get them to the president?

Gerson: To that level. There were often budget objections that came from OMB. That’s their job. Office of Management and Budget. There were often objections at the State Department and other places because of competing priorities. They’d rather spend the money in other ways because they know there’s a zero sum gain.

But I’ll give you one instance other than AIDS. It was really the president’s malaria initiative, which we felt very little pressure from the Hill and other places to do, but before the G8 Summit in England with Blair, I pushed hard along with a few members of the National Security Council to have a major malaria initiative.

It was opposed at almost every level and by almost every kind of power center within the White House. But I had independent access to the president and made the case, and he had become very morally engaged on this issue. This is an issue where you have a million people in Africa every year die of a completely preventable disease, eighty or ninety percent are children under five.

These deaths happen entirely because of our lack of generosity, or the lack of generosity of the international community. There’s no other reason.

The reality is, when we had the climatic meeting in the Oval Office and he’s flipping through the briefing book, the policy briefing book that he gets on these things, I was prepared for the big debate.

And he said, “I’ve talked with Mike about this. I approve it.” And that was it.

And now that program is being very aggressively implemented. The goal is to reduce mortality in fifteen focus countries by half, saving hundreds of thousands of lives over the next fifteen years, mainly children.

That is what America can do and be in the world under the right circumstances.

I wish we could do more of that. I don’t believe that as a nation America has become more generous in the post-9/11 world, in this ideological competition that’s going on. Most people don’t understand that the administration has more than doubled overseas development assistance, more than tripled development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa. These are good things. But they are still very small compared to our budget. I’ve referred to it in the book as kind of a widow’s mite from a millionaire. I think it’s a great challenge.

It’s one of the things I’m focused on at the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting both this type of approach, this soft power approach, not just as an expression of our moral tradition, our belief in universal rights and dignity, but also because many of the dangers of our world come from places where there are failed states that can’t control their borders, that can’t police their populations. And that’s true from the drug trade to criminal gangs, to terrorism, to refugees, to disease. And so I think America has both a moral mandate and a national interest to be even more engaged in these issues.

Lloyd: You’re articulating what we might call a Christian—your being a Christian, an Evangelical Christian—a powerful vision for where you hope the Republican Party would go. There seems to be a struggle going on for the soul and future of the Republican Party now. And you document in your book the power of some of the other important groups. Libertarians. Tax-cutters. People committed above all to the waging of the war. The religious right. The more social conservatives. And in the middle of that you’re articulating this thing called “heroic conservatism,” this vision of an idealistic America committed to serving the poor in the world.

Are you optimistic at all that that kind of vision can take hold? It’s hard to spot, in the current debates going on, that sort of vision claiming peoples’ attention.

Gerson: Well, I tell you two sources of optimism. One of them is when I was doing policy work at the White House in one of the most divisive, bitter, polarized periods of American political history, on a number of these issues I’ve found unusual alliances of committed people, bipartisan, cross-ideological alliances that could make a very large difference. So that is encouraging to me.

I was very involved on Darfur, found that both conservative Christian groups and traditional human rights groups had a lot of common ground on those issues. I was involved on the disease issues, where you find a broad alliance of people that are involved in these efforts. Since I left government, I’m on the board of One Vote Away, the One campaign’s outreach, in the campaign, working with people like Podesta and Donna Brazile and Mike McCurry and others, that have this very similar commitment on these issues.

So that, to me, is one source of hope. If at least on that set of issues, that there is a genuine bipartisan opportunity, it seems to me.

The second source of hope are the changes that I see within my own religious background and community, what’s going on in Evangelical Christianity. I think there is a head-snapping generational change taking place between the old religious right, which is viewed—

Lloyd: …Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson…

Gerson: …and that generation, who played an important role in their time, but I think of particularly building ties to Roman Catholics, and there are other accomplishments of that era. But I think there are so many Evangelicals looking for a model of social engagement beyond the religious right. It leads them to people like Rick Warren, who I think you’re going to have here soon, who is deeply committed on these African issues. And I think there’s a younger generation of Evangelicals that are looking for something different.

When I go and talk with Evangelical students, as I’ve done at Harvard University or at Wheaton College or other places, and asked them, “Who’s your main model? Who do you view as your ideal of social engagement?”

I always get two answers. I either get Rick Warren or I get Bono. I don’t know how Bono would receive that. I’ve gotten to know him a little bit; but they’re looking for something that is has a broader vision of social justice. I find among Evangelicals, so many people—you talked about this division within the Republican Party. There are a lot of people influenced by libertarian ideology, but there are a significant number of religious people who are influenced by Catholic social thought.

Lloyd: Say what that is…Catholic social thought.

Gerson: It’s influenced me. I’m in the Anglican tradition, but you know Catholic social thought has focused on two main areas. One of them is subsidiary, which means that social problems and challenges are often best met by the strength of local communities and families and these structures and institutions of our common life that are closest to the people.

It also teaches that when those institutions fail at the local level, that higher order institutions, including government, need to intervene to help.

So we should trust communities, but when civil rights are denied, the government has a duty and obligation to intervene.

So at one level that leads to a respect for decentralized… the institutions of community.

But the other principle is solidarity, which says that the justice of the society is judged by its treatment of the weak and poor, in particular. And that’s very different than libertarian ideology, which really does teach, in my view, that the justice of a society is determined by the impartial imposition of rules. Rule of law. Social freedom. Other things.

That, to me, is something different than Christianity brings to these political debates. It says that justice is not just that the rules are the same for everyone. Justice is how the weakest members of the human family are treated and valued.

Lloyd: So does this shape the heroic conservatism?

Gerson: I think it has to. I think there are consequences…

Lloyd: What does that mean, heroic conservatism?

Gerson: Well, you know, I’ve been involved in developing ideas of compassionate conservatism. And I was looking for a way to express that was mainly focused on trying to find a way to empower community and religious institutions to take care of social problems.

It was a narrowly domestic focus. But I was looking for some language that would also include these issues that had to do with the defense of human rights and dignity abroad, the fight against disease, the promotion of development. And it strikes me, I was very much influenced by Catholic social thought, but I’ve also been very influenced by the model of social engagement of Evangelicalism from the nineteenth century. And the eighteenth century.

Lloyd: Such as?

Gerson: Such as William Wilberforce. Such as Lord Shaftesbury. These were great British conservatives. They were not…

Lloyd: Evangelical, in the case of Wilberforce…

Gerson: Right. And Shaftesbury as well. They came from that wing of the Church of England, but deeply… They were Burkian in a certain way. They were opposed to the French Revolution. They were opposed to rapid destabilizing social change, just like most conservatives are. But they were also deeply committed to ideals of human rights and justice that came directly from their faith. And somebody like Wilberforce, of course, fought the slave trade with tremendous intensity. Also, this Evangelical movement also was very concerned about the rights of workers and industrial revolutionary England, and problems that had to do with addiction in their time, with gin laws and a lot of other things. And had a very broad social concern. A broad vision, compelling vision of social justice.

I wanted to get at that: is that an authentic tradition of conservatism? I believe it is. Should it contend for the soul of the party? I believe it should. Is it the predominant view right now? Probably not.

Lloyd: Let me ask you about—and after this we’re going to go to questions from the audience—use of the word “heroic.” That seems the part that certainly catches my imagination. Is this sense of a great cause to do good in the world and to address the immense crisis in global poverty that you have been so compelling in talking and writing about. “Heroic” can also sound like it’s up to us to be the hero on the white horse charging in. It plays into a whole American myth that we are the powerful ones, and we should go do it ourselves, and some would even say that’s a little bit of what happened in the war with Iraq. It fell to us to do this on our own if we need to.

How do you see that playing out? Is this heroic conservatism something that we take up cause after cause and go fix the world ourselves? Or is there something more collaborative in that vision?

Gerson: Well, there are two aspects to that. One of them is, it has to be collaborative, because good development theory we’re moving towards is really a partnership with other countries, not dictating to them. That’s the theory behind PEPFAR, the president’s emergency plan that fights malaria, behind the Millennium Challenge Account which is the other big presidential initiative in these areas. You can’t go in and say, “Make these changes,” and get the results that you want. You have to find ways to reward and work with reform-minded people in the countries themselves. Good public officials and private and religious institutions that do this work.

Lloyd: I should add that our own Cathedral is managing a major PEPFAR grant addressing malaria in Mozambique through the local congregations. Precisely what you’re talking about.

Gerson: So, from one perspective, if you go in as a paternalist instead of a partner, you don’t get anything done. So I believe that that’s true as a matter of… But you know, these resources do make a difference. And America’s role in the world can be this. So I do believe it is heroic in one way. And I’ll give you this story.

I have a good friend who works for Bono who was in Zambia not too long ago, and at a rural clinic that was receiving money from PEPFAR and beginning to provide the AIDS drugs there, ARVs. This woman had walked two days to come and get these drugs, and she asked her, “Why did you come?”

And her response was, “Because we heard the Americans are coming.”

And that I think is what America can do and be in the world. And that is a heroic role. It’s the kind of thing that can capture the American imagination, open the minds of Americans towards foreign assistance, it seems to me. We need to be talking about these things.

Americans need to be proud of what we’re doing and committed to do more. That’s the case I wanted to make.

Now, working with other countries is also a big priority here, which we have found in Darfur. This is a circumstance where we couldn’t act alone. I’ve been to Darfur. I’ve been on the ground and I’ve been in the camps and I’ve been to the destroyed villages, and your immediate reaction is, “Why can’t the Marines come in?” Because the Janjaweed are not militarily sophisticated, and why can’t we do this?

But we can’t. That’s a circumstance where you’re in a Muslim country with a hostile government, where we would be easily painted as occupiers even when we were just defending the camps, okay?

So you have to work in a global setting. So we went to the United Nations Security Council. We’re working through the AU. We’re trying to deal with the Arab League. But I’ll tell you, those things are important. And multilateralism is irreplaceable.

But one warning I’ll tell you is that it can also be deeply frustrating. It’s not just a panacea. You can’t just say we should just be more multilateral, because many of these world institutions are designed for inertia. One of my great frustrations is that a country like Sudan has cover from countries like China. And has prevented earlier responsible action.

So I think there are many areas where America can’t act alone in the world.

But I also think international institutions have to work much better. I’m serving now, I’m on the board of the Holocaust Museum here in town, which is a marvelous institution. We’re doing a Genocide Prevention Task Force that’s sponsored in part by the museum that’s headed by Madeleine Albright and Secretary Cohen, looking at this issue about why we seem never to be able to have an early, active response on genocide.

And there’s an American component to that. And there’s an international component. But we haven’t gotten that right yet. So that is, to me, has been a tremendous source of frustration.

Lloyd: Let’s go to our audience.

Question: One of the radioactive issues in this political season is immigration. What would you see as the sensible, heroically conservative position on immigration?

Gerson: Well, it is a difficult issue. It’s the only issue that I take, you know I’m very open to immigration. One of the things that attracted me initially to Governor Bush in 1999 was that he had taken a completely different approach than, say, Governor Wilson of California. And the models were just entirely different. So when he went to South Carolina, and we’re just about to go into the South Carolina primaries—that’s a very conservative state—in a tight battle with Senator McCain, in that year, and he was asked a hostile question in a forum like this about immigration.

His response was, “These are people who are coming to America to feed their families. Love and family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande River.” The president believes that these are in many ways the kind of people that we want in America, and are willing to take risks in coming to this country.

Now that doesn’t mean that you can have an open border. And it doesn’t mean a lot of things. But the reality here is I think that there’s a moral imperative on this issue, which is that human rights and dignity are not determined by nationality. And that’s a radical principle.

And we need to be a welcoming society in many ways. And I, as a conservative, apply that to immigration, to refugees, to the handicapped, to the elderly, and I apply it to the unborn. I think we need a consistent ethic of life on these issues, by which we value individual rights and dignity. And I view immigration as part of that commitment.

So I think there’s a profoundly important moral aspect to this.

But I will just say to the few Republicans that may be in the audience that there’s also a political imperative here. The Republican Party is in the midst right now of alienating the fastest growing group of voters in the country.

George Bush went from his first election, having about thirty percent of the Hispanic vote, to having over forty percent in 2004. It’s possible for Republicans to do under the right circumstance. And now in mid-term elections that vote was back down to about thirty percent. Particularly the Evangelical Hispanic leaders that I talk to, and most people don’t recognize that about twenty percent of Hispanics in America are Protestant, about fifteen percent are Evangelical. These are people that have been very supportive of George Bush and are deeply disillusioned by the Republican Party right now.

So I think there are two imperatives on this issue. But I’ll have to tell you it’s a bitter issue on the right, right now. I think there’ a disturbing… Let me put it this way. I understand people that believe that we need to have an orderly border. I think you can believe that, and that’s not a morally problematic view.

But I think there are a significant number of people in the Republican Party, and some Democrats as well, who believe that somehow Hispanic culture is diluting or undermining American culture. And I think that’s a very dangerous position to take. That perspective is open to the worst kind of prejudice.

Lloyd: I have to add, one striking moment in me in watching debates and snapshots on TV is how periodically—in this case it’s after a debate about immigration, it will be in this case, it’s John McCain who will say, “But remember these are children of God.” A powerful religious voice that’s…

Gerson: I think it’s in fact one of the good moments of this campaign was the immigration speech that McCain did early where he talked about three instances of people of Hispanic illegal immigrants who had crossed the border and died in the process. He talked about a little girl with the Bible in her backpack, in one of his speeches. And it was a humanizing way to talk about these issues. Most people don’t, in our political system, don’t talk in basic human ways about illegal immigrants. That to me is very important.

But it’s also an issue, one of the few—my wife will attest to this—where I was with this conservative group and had someone walk out of a dinner when I making this case.

Lloyd: Something visceral about it.

Gerson: Exactly. That’s right, deeply held…

Lloyd: Let’s go to the next question.

Question: In my church’s book club we are reading a fascinating book called The History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch. It looks at the impact of Revelation and the other apocalyptic text in the Bible and on Western civilization. And he talks about Ronald Reagan’s belief that we might be in latter times and how James Watt incurred that we didn’t really need to think too much about conceiving our planet because we might be in latter times. You’ve mentioned Catholic social thought and libertarian views, but the Republican Party has also been shaped by this belief that we are looking towards the Apocalypse. It’s shaped our Middle East policy. It’s shaped our environmental policy. When you were at the White House, did you see any impact of that kind of belief? What do you say to the millions of Americans who have bought the Left Behind series and believe that the end of the world is near and that we need to prepare for that?

Gerson: Well, I guess, first of all… The immediate response is that I never heard any discussions of any kind of eschatology when it came to the Middle East or any other topic. So, I don’t know if that was a lack of interest, a lack of sophistication of theological beliefs. I have no idea. But I never heard it. And there was a lot to talk about in the Middle East, but it didn’t come up.

But there are plenty of Americans who believe this. It’s absolutely true. I guess it raises the broader question for me about the role of the relationship between religion and politics. And the way I’ve maybe solved some of this in my own mind is, I think there is little or no influence on politics from… there should be little or no influence on politics from eschatology, which is a highly speculative theological set of issues. That is one of the topics where even Jesus talked about “no man knows the time and the hour,” and there’s a certain kind of humility in his teachings on the end.

But I think it’s important in one way that it talks about… It’s certainly an expression of a religious belief that the end of history is justice, that God’s justice is… When Martin Luther King talked about “the arc of history is long but it bends towards freedom,” okay? That we believe there is a just God in charge of history. And that’s an encouraging thing in a certain way.

But I think that’s different than eschatology.

Lloyd: Let’s jump… I don’t want to keep you stuck on eschatology…

Gerson: I don’t think that there’s much influence for soteriology in politics.

Lloyd: Now you’re getting into deeper theological trouble…

Gerson: I was a theology student. But I do think there’s a large influence in our history, and should be, of anthropology, which is your view of human rights and dignity. That comes from faith. And it’s legitimate to come from faith. So that’s how I’ve resolved it in my own mind.

Lloyd: Next question.

Question: Good morning and thank you for being with us. I moved to Washington from Texas, and when President Bush was governor, he reached out to the other side, he had a real alliance with a Democratic lieutenant governor, and I heard members of the Democratic legislature say they had more access to Governor Bush than they’d had with previous Democratic governors. And when he ran, he ran as a uniter not a divider. But in your remarks you talked about this unique divisive time that we have today. I just wonder: what happened? And there are many who would say the reason for this divisiveness is due to some arrogance on behalf of the administration. I’d like to have you respond to that, please.

Gerson: No. I understand the criticism and I saw… But I’ll tell you the moment that I saw the major tone in change with the Congress, and that was in the aftermath of the Iraq war. I think the way that that worked out, for a variety of reasons and causes, embittered the atmosphere in Washington in a way that had not been previously. So I saw that as a major influence.

The only things I would point to as counter examples there, and these are early, before this atmosphere was really undermined—are things like No Child Left Behind, which we did with Senator Kennedy, which I believe is a very important law, basically because it says that schools can’t hide behind generally good test scores if they’re failing minority children. I think that’s a very important principle that we shouldn’t abandon. And we’re seeing improvements in test scores and closing the gap between minorities and whites on test scores.

If you look at the prescription drug benefit in Medicare, I think that’s an achievement in social justice. It’s actually been implemented, and was done in a bipartisan fashion.

So there are some achievements on that side. And there would have been on immigration if the Republican Party itself had not revolted. And, so we need to step back a little bit from this environment and say for most presidents, those three achievements—No Child Left Behind, a Medicare drug benefit, and immigration reform—would have been major domestic achievements done with bipartisan support.

I know we have a bitter atmosphere but I just don’t want people to dismiss some of the other things that came.

But I saw sources of division that came out of the initial election crisis which I think embittered—you know, the Florida crisis, which I think embittered a number of people who might have been open in other cases. I think the war played a very important role there.

And I do wish, for example, the way the Social Security debate worked itself out. I wish there had maybe been earlier consultation and outreach, instead of a deference of the Republican leadership of Congress and the committees on a lot of those things.

So I think that there were clearly some mistakes and failures there. But you know, some of my frustration, and if you read my column and read the book is with both sides.

I don’t want to take too long, but one of my more frustrating moments in the White House was after Katrina. And not just because of the initial failures, of FEMA and other things. But because this revealed deep enduring problems of injustice, poverty, and hopelessness that have been around for a number of generations.

And Republicans looked at this and were almost entirely focused on budget offsets.

And Democrats looked at it, and they were almost entirely focused on the apportionment of blame.

And there was almost no one in our political, our national political system that wanted to focused on these deep historical issues of inequity and injustice that come out of slavery, segregation, and denial of economic opportunity.

And so I think there has been in some ways a failure of our political system on both sides to address issues that I would hope would unite some of our political class around, you know, issues of disease and development, issues of wealth and poverty, issues of human rights and dignity. You’d think those would be the areas you could, and we need more of that.

Lloyd: Next question.

Question: Here’s another question from a Texan and it sounds somewhat similar. I like everything you said. I agree with everything you said, but just a common similar to Fred Thompson when he was criticizing Mike Huckabee’s economic policy, “That doesn’t sound Republican; that sounds Democrat.” And the question, do you think there’s a difference—should there even be a difference—between policies in this kind of area?

Gerson: Well, I actually kind of like Mike Huckabee’s views on these topics. It’s a hopeful trend in the Republican Party. He is tapping into something that is real. These concerns and fears among lower-class and middle-class voters are real. We have problems of income mobility in this country. We have problems of the affordability of health care and education, and in particular college education.

And if Republicans don’t address these things, they’re going to be irrelevant to these concerns. Mike Huckabee as the governor of Arkansas has a feel for that. He has a better feel than someone who has been in the Congress, where you don’t have executive responsibility. I think governors, like Governor Bush in Texas, are often more sensitive to these issues. So I like Mike Huckabee’s views on these things. I think the unfortunate thing is that his fair tax moving toward a consumption tax is actually pretty regressive. It’s not necessarily going to help these people that he wants to help, at least in the forms that I’ve seen. So I think there’s a policy disconnect when it comes to Huckabee’s plan. But having this as an emphasis is quite important.

The good thing is, at the beginning of this political process there was a strong feeling that the process was going to reward the most conventional anti-government conservatives. That’s what Romney wanted to be. That’s what Thompson wanted to be. And the two hottest candidates are Huckabee are McCain, who don’t fit into that category. And I find that kind of encouraging, actually, that voters didn’t necessarily buy this argument that the best Republican message is really just an anti-government message.

But, I agree with you. I think that it’s a struggle in many ways, a struggle for the soul of the party which is a continuing and on-going one. What many people, like Thompson, like Romney, believe there’s a significant backlash against these ideals of compassion and conservatism. There’s certainly a backlash among movement conservatives, intellectual conservatives. But I guess the good thing is there are at least some voters out there who haven’t bought that.

Question: Is there, or should there, be a place in conservatism, either heroic or compassionate, or otherwise, for D.C. voting rights in the Congress?

Gerson: D.C. voting rights. You ask an easy question. You know it’s a topic I’ll eventually have to write on, writing for the Post. I’m not sure where I come down on at this point. There seems to be a justice inequity argument. And then there is a situation where a medium-sized city would have two senators. So I think it might be possible to move towards that with other political accommodations, but I’m not sure that I know enough about it to have an opinion on, and I’ll eventually have to have one.

Question: It seems to me that the political right, with respect to the war… It seems there might be almost a embarrassment from a certain segment of the population, to get back to maybe some of the original precepts of Jesus, it seems to me that what we would consider the more liberal causes of Jesus. I know this is a tough last question. So that would be one question: to see if there is a, not a chink in the armor of the right-wing conservatives—we’ll say that; we’ll use Richard Cizik and the environmental. And then, is there also a way to bring this right wing—people that are more aligned with the traditional messages of Jesus like “blessed are the peacemakers? and the like—is there a way to bring that together? In a nutshell?

Gerson: It’s a good question. And as I was saying... Let me answer the second one first. I’ll give you an example. I work closely with that and with Bono when I was with the White House. He’s very opposed to the war.

Lloyd: Very opposed/post-liberal?

Gerson: No, opposed to the War. To the Iraq war. But he was willing to work with the president on issues of common concern. And actually played a very important role in that. So in other words, deep opposition that he had, deep moral opposition did not prevent him on issues when there was genuine common ground, from working with the administration. I thought that’s a good example in a lot of ways.

I actually arranged a lunch between Bono and the President, and they got along very well because they actually share a faith even though they share very different views on the Iraq war. And there was not just a civility, but a common purpose on a certain number of issues that I think is a kind of model. It’s a very good thing.

The thing I don’t like in politics is when disagreements prevent fellowship and cooperation on other areas. That, to me, is a kind of embittered politics that accomplishes little.

So, I’ve seen some examples of that. I do think that there are plenty of people in the conservative community that have not just had second thoughts, but third thoughts about the Iraq war. There’s no question here.

But I can only tell you—you can accept it or not—that, not being in the very inner sanctum but in that one level beyond, there was an absolute conviction that what we faced was a genuine threat to the American people.

And sometimes you can be wrong without being evil.

I believe that we’re on a much better path than Iraq. I think the president and General Petraeus have chosen a much better approach. I think the Iraqis are rising to their responsibilities in ways we haven’t seen before. I think that we have continuing responsibilities in that country, but I understand the deep opposition on it. But I guess I would hope that there is a way on these other issues to move forward.

Lloyd: We should stop there. This has been a very rich conversation. And I want to say, Mike, how much I appreciate your work at trying to chart some fertile common ground both within the Republican Party on these issues of global suffering, global hunger, and between Republicans and Democrats. It’s something that I think we can all be wrestling with and taking a look at.

We hope you’ll join us next week as we continue down that vein of addressing global hunger when we have with us the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on world food programs, Tony Hall.

Our worship begins at 11:15, in just a few minutes. Meanwhile, there is coffee available in the west end of the Cathedral just through the first set of doors and to your left. I’m delighted to say Michael Gerson’s going to join us for some coffee for a few minutes.

Please join me in thanking him now for being with us.