I actually first read of this when Ron Suskind relayed in his book “The Price Of Loyalty” a couple of years ago,  in his chapter on John Diulio,  the first appointee to Bush’s Faithbased initiative.

“Just get me a f-ing faith-based thing,” eight words attributed to Karl Rove by author and former special assistant to the president, David Kuo, that could by themselves very well decide those midterms.  In our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, part two of our look inside Mr. Kuo‘s extraordinary new book, “Tempting Faith,” written from his earlier vantage point as the number-two man in Bush‘s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

When Olbermann summarizes ,  accurately I think,  that :

To this day, Kuo writes, he believes Mr. Bush loves Jesus, that he is a good man.  However, Kuo also writes many Christians assume from his belief in Jesus Christ that Bush won’t do what other politicians do:  (INAUDIBLE) their work, hide their mistakes, spin the truth, and that those assumptions are wrong. 

I have to ask:  Why DOESN’T “belief in Christ” assume a difference in politics?  Kuo comes awfully close to communicating that “belief in Jesus” doesn’t impact “the way we do politics”.  And so far,  COMPLETELY absent from all this dialogue is any talk whatsoever about the role of the Church in all of this.  The Church is the politics.  But in today’s world,  where “politics” is what it is,  and Evangelical Christianity,  showing what it is NOT,  this is a confusing juxtaposition,  but this is the key thing here, I think.  Seeing it as a kind of juxtaposition is a more faithful perspective than “being relevant”.  Because after all,  how do you become “relevant” to a world perspective that is at odds? 

Source: Book: Dirty politics of conservative compassion – Countdown with Keith Olbermann – MSNBC.com