The Love Him, Hate Him President

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Bush stepped into America's raging culture wars as the most openly religious President in modern times. He has given voice to a constituency of Evangelicals and fundamentalists that was moving out of politics, convinced that it could not accommodate people of faith either in office or in action. Bringing them back has been a near obsession for his political guru Karl Rove, who has told audiences that Republicans must find the 4 million who failed to show up at the polls in 2000. Bush has denied funding to organizations overseas that promote abortion, has signed the partial-birth-abortion ban and opposes gay marriage, but more fundamentally, he has overcome the skepticism of Evangelicals by being a witness to their common faith.

Asked during an early Republican debate in Iowa to name the "philosopher-thinker" he most identified with, Bush replied, "Christ, because he changed my heart." In office, he often talks about the power of prayer and calls freedom a "gift from the Almighty." He appointed Attorney General John Ashcroft (who has proudly said that in America "we have no king but Jesus") and surrounded himself with a more quietly devout circle that includes the likes of Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes. "What is most important," says a Christian activist, "is that he is one of us."

But for those who don't share his religiosity--or those who do, but think it has no place in government--this quality has hardened their views of him. A 53% majority of voters either strongly or somewhat agree that Bush has been too quick to interject his own moral and religious beliefs into politics. "There are so many people who are tired of the arrogance of George Bush," says Susan Post, the owner of a feminist bookstore near the Texas state capitol in Austin. "They are tired of someone who believes he is leading via a higher power, that he has all the answers and that he is right."

CLEAVING THE CAPITAL

Whereas Bush prided himself on building bipartisan coalitions in Texas, he has done little to stop G.O.P. congressional leaders in Washington from all but shutting out Democrats from the negotiating process--depriving them of any say, or credit, for such crucial legislation as a Medicare prescription-drug benefit and an energy-policy overhaul. At one point, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas had his Democratic colleagues forcibly removed from a library by the police after they walked out of a hearing. In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats engaged in a 40-hour display of petulance over the confirming of federal judges. Early efforts at bipartisanship have disintegrated as Democrats charge that Bush's promises fall short of what Republicans on the Hill ultimately deliver. Though Bush promised $15 billion in AIDS funding over five years, the first year's funding did not meet expectations. On education, his signature bipartisan accomplishment, Congress has not come up with the money that education experts say it will take to truly leave no child behind. Democratic Congressman George Miller and Senator Ted Kennedy, both of whom had done business with Bush and became symbols of Bush's early willingness to reach across party lines, are now bitter opponents of the White House.

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