Joe Klein remembers former White House aide David Kuo, who died this weekend:
David was smitten by George W. Bush. He was glowing after their first meeting. “He really gets it,” David said, an assessment I shared—at least when it came to the efficacy of faith-based social programs. But I warned him to be careful: politicians are politicians, they almost always disappoint. And so Bush did: David went to work as John DiIulio’s deputy in the Office of Faith-Based and Social Policy. Both he and DiIulio was disappointed by the politicization of that office. John left frustrated, calling Bush’s advisors “Mayberry Macchiavellis” and David later wrote a sad, searing book about the experience called “Tempting Faith.”Both John—another dear friend of mine, another genius of kindness—and David gave President Bush a partial exemption. They believed he wanted to do the right thing, that he really cared about the poor, but that he had too many other things to worry about after September 11, 2001, to be fully cognizant of the moral and spiritual failure of the faith-based effort. David was asked to write speeches for Bush’s 2004 campaign and he agreed to write only one, Bush’s speech to the NAACP. He could not bring himself to write speeches about war, or speeches that attacked the Democrats. (Years earlier, at a White House prayer breakfast, he had approached Hillary Clinton after she offered a moving prayer and said, “I spend my days trying to defeat you and your husband, and sometimes that becomes personal anger, and that is wrong and I will never allow myself to do that again.”)
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