Cruising The Nation, I ran across this quick hit from Katrina vanden Heuvel:
When asked by George Stephanopoulos in the Sunday Republican debate to list his mistakes, Rudy Giuliani replied, "George, your father is a priest. I can explain it to your father, not to you."
To think how hard JFK had to work to convince the American people that as President, he would answer to the Constitution, not the Pope.
But let's treat Giuliani's answer with all due seriousness:
Does Giuliani mean to suggest that as President, he will only submit to questioning by the clergy?
(Now, there is a legitimate question whether Giuliani is still able to accept the sacraments and offer confession in the Catholic church - which I'd normally deem irrelevant but Giuliani practically forces down our throats here.)
But that's not my primary interest. Reading this quote, I was reminded of this famous exchange in a 2000 Republican debate (remember it? I know you do!):
QUESTIONER: What political philosopher or thinker do you most identify with and why?
GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Christ, because He changed my heart.
QUESTIONER: I think that the viewer would like to know more on how He has changed your heart.
GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, if they don't know it is going to be hard to explain. When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart, it changes your life, and that's what happened to me. (Cheers and applause)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is one of the moments in which I truly began to loathe George W. Bush and the political movement he was ushering onto the stage.
In his answer here, he spoke in the language of exclusion: If you don't know what a religious conversion moment feels like, then I can't - won't - help you. He gave a version of a schoolyard taunt: It's for me to know and you to find out.
And since that's the whole basis for self-analysis offered to the American people, well, too bad for those of you to whom this is an alien experience. Bush offered no language to translate the founding elements of his political philosophy for the non-religious.
What's more, Bush was arrogant enough to presume that his personal experience with evangelical Christianity represented an ur-Truth common to evangelicals. Nope - no explanation required to the in-crowd or otherwise. (And btw, Jesus changed his heart... from what to what?)
While Giuliani's and Dubya's answers are not direct parallels, the invocation of religion as a means of avoiding a question and attempting to bully the rest of us into accepting a candidate's unassailability is just as distasteful in 2007 as it was in 2000.
In fact, more so. We've seen this movie before and know where it's heading.
I dearly hope some enterprising journo will follow up on this and ask:
Mr. Giuliani, you've stated that you will explain yourself to priests in the Catholic Church. What do you think you owe the American people?