Life of the Party

How can Democrats provide that "counterpoint" on something like the nuclear option? If you were advising Senate Democrats on their strategy in fighting Bush's judicial nominees, what would you tell them about getting their own conceptions of morality into the debate?

There's a much broader context. The right gets it wrong by saying there are only two moral-values issues, only two: abortion and gay marriage. Now, those are important issues, and we need a better, deeper moral conversation on all sides on those issues. But to go along with the idea that there are only two moral-values issues is to give away the whole discussion.

I'm an evangelical Christian, and I'm bound to a Bible where there are 3,000 verses on the poor, which means fighting poverty is a moral-values issue, too. Protecting the environment, otherwise known as "God's creation," is a moral-values issue. And the ethics of war -- whether we go to war, when we go to war and whether we tell the truth about going to war -- these are profoundly religious matters. So you've got to broaden the conversation.

You can't just dive in to talk of religion in the middle of the feud about the filibuster.

There is no religious position on the filibuster. The filibuster is a Senate procedure, and we all know that it has been used for good and for ill. But it's gotten caught up in this battle over judicial nominees. And that battle is about more than abortion because judges [also] rule on things like workers' rights and human rights and environmental regulations and political representation and voting procedures. A lot of pretty important issues are at stake here.

The issue the Bible talks about most often, over and over again, is how you treat the poorest and most vulnerable in your society. That's the issue the prophets raise again and again, and Jesus talks about it more than any other topic, more than heaven or hell, more than sex or morality. So how did Jesus become pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-American?

There's a major distortion going on here, a major misrepresentation of Christian faith. It's almost like our faith has been stolen. And it's time to take it back.

The Republicans have made faith into kind of a wedge, a weapon to divide us and destroy us. Bridges, not wedges, is what we ought to be providing.

But can Democrats get voters to start thinking that there's more to religion than abortion and gay marriage -- that something like poverty is a religious issue and that the Republicans aren't doing much about it? In his first inaugural address, Bush invoked the Gospel of Luke, saying, "When we see that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side." And nobody jumped up and shouted, "Hypocrite!"

I would argue that when we're having over 2,000 people come out every night in every city [on the book tour], a lot of people do see the hypocrisy in such a profoundly religious matter. The Zogby poll right after the [2004] election asked voters what the greatest moral crisis was in the nation, and 64 percent said either materialism and greed or poverty and economic justice.

So there is a resonance there. What if we had a political leader who ever spoke to it? I mean, my goodness, when did we have John Kerry talk about poverty as a fundamental moral issue or lift up the plight of the poor as a high priority? John Edwards did for a short period during the primary campaign season, and bless his heart for doing so, but he and that issue got put on a shelf. You didn't hear about "Two Americas" ever again.

When you talk [to young Christians] about poverty as a test of faith, you receive a standing ovation every single time. So there is a deep resonance out there, but Democrats aren't really talking about this as a profoundly moral question.

Bush did that, at least to a degree, when he ran as a "compassionate conservative" in 2000.

That's why he won. Exactly.

I met with him before he came to Washington, in Austin, on poverty and faith-based initiatives. He had about 20 people there, and he knew that a lot of us hadn't voted for him. He came up to me at one point and said, "Jim, I don't understand poor people. I've never lived around poor people. I don't know what they think or how they feel. I'm just a white Republican guy who doesn't get it. How do I get it?"

I said, "Well, you have to listen to poor people and those who live and work with poor people." And he said, "Mike, Mike, come over here," and [speechwriter Michael] Gerson came over, and Bush said, "Write this down, write this down." And then, in his inaugural, he said, "Many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those who do." That came right out of that conversation.

If you look back at that inaugural address, it talked more about poverty than anyone had done in years. But there have been no resources [provided]. I wrote a memo to Democrats in January, and I told them: "You've got to frame the budget in moral terms. Do a moral audit on the budget, talk about it as a moral document." When the president says, "I'm for faith-based initiatives," but then has no resources and no program, no domestic policy beyond tax cuts for the wealthy, it [turns the promises] into a photo op.

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