Losing Faith in the President
2006-10-17
Source: Washington Post
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rss feedWhite House officials realized they had a problem, former staffer David Kuo writes in his new book, "Tempting Faith," when they saw how a panel rated the first applications for grants under the "faith-based initiative," President Bush's vaunted effort to help religious charities.
On a scale of 1 to 100, respected national organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America scored in the mid-70s to mid-80s, "while something called Jesus and Friends Ministry from California, a group with little more than a post office box," scored 89 and Pat Robertson's overseas aid organization, Operation Blessing, scored 95, according to Kuo.
"It was obvious that the ratings were a farce," he writes, adding that he and other White House aides feared that if the list became public, "it would show once and for all that the initiative was purely about paying off political friends for their support."
Portions of Kuo's explosive book, which formally went on sale yesterday, were leaked last week by MSNBC. They brought heated denials from White House press secretary Tony Snow and other current and former Bush administration officials.
The book is full of insider anecdotes and details, many of which were not reported by MSNBC, and some of which can be read as defending rather than attacking the Bush White House.
In the case of the grant applications, for example, Kuo says that the ratings obviously favored conservative Christian groups but that the White House "really did have nothing to do with" it. The problem, he asserts, is that the "peer review" panel chosen by the Department of Health and Human Services came from the "faith-based policy world."
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