Recently THE WEEKLY STANDARD published Irwin Stelzer's truly brilliant account of a literary luncheon arranged by President Bush to honor Andrew Roberts's History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, a thick, heavy book that picks up the skein begun by Winston Churchill with his long four-volume treatment of the subject. The President was not at all intimidated by his fifteen or so guests, including the formidable Norman Podhoretz and Gertrude Himmelfarb, Paul Gigot, Allen Guelzo, Seth Lipsky, Mona Charen, Kate O'Beirne, Irwin Stelzer himself, and of course Mr. Roberts and his wife, the writer Susan Gilchrist. The President was not pretentious; and he was not at all showing off.
Stelzer gives such a vivid account of the event that there is little to be gained by adding new details. (How does he memorize so well what others say? I don't remember him taking any notes.) But there is one thing I must clear up to save my theological reputation and one interesting detail that I had caught wind of before the meeting, and took the occasion to confirm.
Prior to the event, I had fixed two points in mind to insert into the conversation if an opportunity came up. (From past experiences, I had learned that merely going with the flow and not adding something--or if adding, doing so only on the spur of the moment--is afterwards a bitter memory). Before sitting down, therefore, I was already determined to press the president on two of his favorite themes. The first
is the peace and calm that he says comes to him from the Almighty, which allows him not to be perturbed by the high-decibel (and often mean) shrieks of critics. The second is a phrase he often uses, "the war between good and evil."
Stelzer actually quotes me a tad inaccurately on the second discussion, in a way that brought me a sharp warning from a theologian friend. Stelzer had written: "The discussion centered on Novak's contention that although there is indeed evil, there is no such thing as absolute good." My theologian friend noted that this formulation not only abandons the orthodox Christian tradition (Catholic and Protestant) since St. Augustine, but is a total inversion of it. Augustine reasoned that there is an absolute good, namely God, in all His radiance and power; whereas evil has no ontological existence on its own at all, being no more than a defective good or a perversion of the good.
In actual fact, of course, a White House lunch or even a lunch with friends anywhere is no place for a formal disquisition. Nor did I wish to prompt the president in any pre-determined direction. When he himself introduced his usual phrase about the Almighty, I leapt in to say that some folks criticized him for claiming to have a telephone line to God, Who told him which policies to follow and what to do. The president scoffed. "Hey, no telephone line. I know I'm a sinner. I know that." He added that every day he wants to make sure that he is not being diverted from what is right. "I want to have my conscience clear with Him. Then it doesn't matter so much what others think."
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