Tag: Politics

Leadership Lessons from Bush 41

~ Evan Lenow

The 1988 presidential election cycle is the first one I truly remember. Yes, I was alive during President Reagan’s successful bids for the White House in 1980 and 1984, but I was only 2 and 6 years old, respectively. I have memories of President Bush’s vow where he said, “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Although I have studied some aspects of presidential politics back to the days of Washington, my experiential knowledge essentially starts with Bush 41 (except for a memory in fourth grade when my class at school sent a letter to President Reagan asking about his favorite Bible verse—as I recall, it was John 3:16).

I just finished reading 41: A Portrait of My Father by George W. Bush. It was a fascinating book with an abundance of insights into the life of George H. W. Bush, much of which could only have been told by his eldest son. In fact, I often caught myself verbalizing the words in my head in the younger President’s signature Texas drawl.

The book is full of personal stories about the Bush family. There are glimpses into difficult decisions to pass up opportunities of privilege in order to work his way to the top. Parts of the book are very emotional as the reader gets a picture of what it is like to win and lose on the political stage.

As I read the book, I was struck by some of the insightful lessons on leadership demonstrated in the life of George Bush. These are lessons that are beneficial no matter what your political persuasion may be.

1. Add a personal touch. I was amazed by the constant references to personal, handwritten notes from the desk of the President. At various times throughout the book, the details of a story came from the notes that President Bush had written to others. The recipients of these notes included family, friends, allies, and political enemies.

No one really writes notes any more. We usually say that we are too busy to do so. But how much busier are we today than the President of the United States. Yes, Mr. Bush was in office nearly 30 years ago, but he served during the end of the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War, and countless other crises in those four years. Yet, he still found time to write personal notes to friends and enemies alike.

Perhaps sending handwritten notes and letters is a relic of previous generations, but I think it is something we should revive. When I receive the occasional note from individuals whom I admire and trust, my spirits are lifted and my loyalty is strengthened. Such a note lets the recipient know he is valued.

2. Treat others with respect. Very few people will ever have the opportunity to develop as many allies and enemies as the President. One of the funniest lines in the book came when George W. Bush recounted his own decision to run for President. He writes, “When reporters would ask how my father would affect the race, I joked that I had inherited half of his friends and all of his enemies” (p. 262). Bush 43 then goes on to state that his father actually had very few enemies. The reason for such seems to be that he treated everyone with respect.

Bush’s career was characterized by difficult relationships. He served as chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate scandal. He wrote a personal letter to President Nixon suggesting that he resign for the good of the country. At the beginning of his term in the White House, he inherited a tense situation with the Soviet Union. Part of that tension was managing his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev. In the midst of the political upheaval in 1989, Bush chose not to celebrate the demise of communism publicly, but instead authored a handwritten letter to Gorbachev proposing a summit. Many now credit President Bush for his work in orchestrating a peaceful end to the Cold War.

One of the most interesting relationships discussed in the book is the one between Bush and President Bill Clinton. Clinton unseated Bush in the 1992 presidential election, but the outgoing President sought to make his successor’s transition as smooth as possible, even leaving a letter of encouragement for him on the desk of the Oval Office. The Bushes welcomed the Clintons to the White House in January of 1993 and then transitioned to private life. However, George W. Bush would later call on the two former Presidents to work together on fundraising for disaster relief following the tsunami in Asia and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ike in the United States. These two political rivals formed an enduring friendship through their work together. Bush 43 writes:

The friendship they formed through their shared service has endured. Bill Clinton visits my parents regularly in Maine. Over time, it became clear that Clinton treated Dad as a sort of father figure, perhaps because Clinton never knew his father. Mother took to calling Clinton her long-lost fifth son—or, as Marvin put it, “a brother from another mother.” Clinton embraced the image and started calling himself the black sheep of the Bush family. He joked that Barbara Bush would do anything to claim another President in the family. (p. 271)

The tendencies I see in leaders today is too often self-promotion at the expense of others. Gone are the days of treating everyone—including your enemies—with respect. In fact, I have witnessed some leaders treat allies so poorly that they become enemies. In an age of self-promotion, respect is a forgotten virtue. Perhaps that is because treating others with respect has a tendency to downplay one’s own accomplishments and importance. True leaders, however, know that relationships are more important than self-promotion.

3. Be willing to serve. The history of the Bush family is one of service, long before George Bush ever ran for political office. The generations that preceded him had served their communities and country. George Bush wanted to do the same. He was a pilot in World War II, escaping what would have been an untimely death after being shot down over the Pacific Ocean. He served as a Congressman from Texas, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, Liaison Officer to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Vice President, and President of the United States.

In several instances, Bush was asked to leave a comfortable role in order to do something difficult. While serving in China in 1975, Bush received a telegram from President Gerald Ford asking him to leave China and become director of the CIA. The CIA was under investigation by Congress for illegal activity under multiple administrations. The position required approval by the Senate and also had the potential to remove him from future considerations to run for higher political office. However, Bush was determined to serve where he was most needed and accepted the post at the CIA.

Political expediency and personal gain are often the goals of service today. Many “leaders” want to take positions that stand to benefit them the most. What Bush demonstrated was a willingness to serve in roles that benefited those around him the most, even if they included the possibility of derailing his own aspirations. Such selflessness is the epitome of service. Taking positions for personal gain isn’t truly service of others—it is self-serving. We should aspire to be leaders who are selfless.

There are many other great lessons to be learned in this profile of Bush 41. His story is one of great triumph, occasional defeat, and spectacular service. While George H. W. Bush may not go down in history as one of the most popular Presidents of all time, he has certainly left a legacy of a selfless leader for others to emulate.

Abortion and Self-Ownership

~ Evan Lenow ~ 1 Comment

Where does the right of self-ownership come from? Is the pro-abortion argument that a woman can do whatever she wishes with her body actually grounded in any theological or philosophical ideas? How does argument relate to the supposed right to abortion in the United States?

Canon & Culture, a project of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, published a piece I wrote on the issue of abortion and self-ownership. Here is an excerpt:

Last July I boarded a bus and drove down to Austin for a pro-life rally on the steps of the Texas State Capitol. We arrived more than an hour before the scheduled start time of the rally, so I had the opportunity to take in my surroundings and observe the arguments being made by the abortion-rights protestors. In what was often crass language, the abortion-rights argument being made at the Capitol that day essentially boiled down to one point—a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body. This can be described as a right to privacy based upon self-ownership.

Since this right is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, where does it find its origin? In contemporary jurisprudence, the right to do what you want with your own body (i.e., the right to privacy) is drawn from the “penumbras” and “emanations” of the Bill of Rights according to Griswold v. Connecticut and out of the 14th Amendment’s restriction on the state from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Applied to the abortion issue, these ideas regarding the right to privacy form the foundation of the Roe v. Wade decision that opened the door for abortion on demand. However, the supposed “right to privacy” found in the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment still does not make self-ownership clear.

Even though most abortion-rights proponents do not make the explicit connection, the right of self-ownership is typically attributed to the work of John Locke in The Second Treatise of Government. Locke writes, “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself” (V.27). There is no doubt that John Locke’s work was very influential upon the Founders of the United States, and language from the Second Treatise appears directly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. However, are we correct in inferring a right to self-ownership of our bodies from Locke?

You can read the rest of the article here.

*You may notice that this article is a little more academic than what I usually post on my website, but that is the purpose of Canon & Culture. Their purpose is “to help build and strengthen the church’s social, ethical, and moral witness by providing thoughtful content from leading thinkers that inspires a rising generation of evangelicals to think Christianly about the public square and the common good.”

Are Corporations People Too?: Hobby Lobby and Religious Liberty

~ Evan Lenow ~ 7 Comments

Supreme_Court_US_2010Who would have ever imagined that a craft store chain owned by a Christian family would be at the center of a Supreme Court case about sexuality, abortifacient drugs, the role of corporations, and religious liberty? Oral arguments were heard today in the Supreme Court case Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. The central point of the case is whether or not the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby and Mardel Christian bookstores, has the right to exercise their religious freedom in opting out of the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requiring employer-provided health plans to offer emergency birth control drugs at no charge to their employees. The Greens have objected on religious grounds that such emergency birth control options are tantamount to abortion and that providing abortion-inducing drugs is a violation of their deeply held religious beliefs.

Trying to predict what the Supreme Court will decide is an exercise in futility, so I will not go down that road. However, I do want to highlight a few interesting notes from today’s oral arguments.

The first is not all that surprising (and possibly not all that interesting)—the high court appears divided. From the best one can tell from the questioning, the Supreme Court is split 4-4 with Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor apparently siding with the government and Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, and Alito leaning towards Hobby Lobby. This leaves Justice Anthony Kennedy as the deciding vote in an otherwise divided Court. This is familiar territory for the current version of the Supreme Court.

The second item of note is that the role of a corporation seems to be a big question. Some of the liberal justices seemed to imply that corporations should simply be able to pick up the tab for the healthcare expenses or fees for not providing healthcare with no impact on the business or the economy. They did not seem to take into account that these healthcare costs have to be paid by someone and that the costs would most likely be passed along to the customer. Justices Kagan and Sotomayor also pressed Paul Clement, the attorney arguing for Hobby Lobby, about whether corporations could opt out of other healthcare options for their employees. Lyle Denniston reports that they “suggested that if corporations gain an exemption from having to provide birth-control services for their female employees, then the next complaint would be about vaccinations, blood transfusions, and a whole host of other medical and non-medical services that a company or its owners might find religiously objectionable.”

On the other hand, Justice Alito pushed back against Solicitor General Donald Verrilli regarding the purpose of corporations. He asked the Solicitor General if the only purpose of corporations was to “maximize profits.” If the object is only to maximize profits, then corporations would have no other rights. However, if corporations serve other purposes, then they might have the right to protection under the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment.

The third item is the most interesting development in my opinion. It relates to the rights of a corporation to make a claim regarding discrimination. The government argued that for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby have no standing to file a claim against the government based on religious discrimination. On the surface this seems to make sense because corporations are not churches, nor are they individuals with religious beliefs. However, the government has already held that corporations can file claims based on racial discrimination. In the same sense, corporations are not individuals of a particular race or ethnicity. The racial discrimination claims have typically been based on the race and ethnicity of the owners.

Applying the same standard to the religious freedom aspect of the Hobby Lobby case, it would appear that the Green family’s deeply held religious beliefs (and clear articulation of those beliefs in company documents) would provide the corporation with the same protections as those guaranteed to them as individuals. This argument could prove to be central in the upcoming decision of the Court.

Once again, we will be left to wait for months until hearing the decision of the Supreme Court that will most likely come in June. Until then, it is futile to speculate what the Court will decide. However, there is one thing that we can do. We can pray for the justices of the Supreme Court that God would grant them wisdom in judging these matters. We should pray for godly wisdom that they would rule according to God’s will. We should pray that they would value life in the way that God values life—seeing those in the womb as no different than a full-grown adult (Psalm 139:13–16).

I urge you to join me in prayer for John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The future of religious liberty in the United States is in their hands.
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Lyle Denniston, “Argument recap: One hearing, two dramas,” SCOTUSblog, March 25, 2014.

Derrick Morgan, Hans von Spakovsky, and Elizabeth Slattery, “How the Supreme Court Justices Reacted to Today’s Hobby Lobby Arguments,” The Foundry, March 25, 2014.

Ilya Shapiro, “Is There No Alternative to Forcing People to Violate Their Religious Beliefs?” Cato Institute, March 25, 2014.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Texas Marriage Amendment

~ Evan Lenow ~ 2 Comments

same sex marriage graphcIn what is now a string of cases decided by federal judges regarding state laws, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia has struck down Texas’ constitutional amendment defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman. After the state legislature presented the amendment in 2005, 76% of Texas voters approved the addition of the amendment to the state constitution.

Judge Garcia immediately stayed his ruling pending an inevitable appeal. This should be quite interesting considering that the man who will be responsible for the appeal, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, is the hands-down favorite to receive the Republican nomination for governor. Abbott will be responsible for filing the appeal while also managing his campaign against likely Democratic nominee Wendy Davis.

This case came about when a lesbian couple filed suit against the state for not recognizing their same-sex marriage performed in Massachusetts in 2009. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram article, the plaintiffs “argued that the state’s gay marriage ban had caused them undue hardship that other married couples do not face. For example, the couple have one child together, but because Texas does not recognize their union, only one parent’s name was allowed on the birth certificate.”

The logic of the names on a birth certificate is quite interesting.  Biologically speaking, only one of the women is the mother although it is likely they both wanted to be listed as mothers. This demonstrates how the redefinition of marriage is attempting to separate the relationship completely from any aspect of procreation. Assuming the couple used an anonymous sperm donor as the father, then standard procedure would be to list the woman who gave birth as the mother. A second mother is biologically impossible for the purposes of a birth certificate. It is unclear how this causes undue hardship related to a medical record that is intended to connect a child to his/her biological parents.

While marriage does not require procreation, separating marriage and procreation completely is illogical. Melissa Moschella has recently written that children have a right to know who their biological parents are and a right to a relationship with them. She states:

The biological parent-child relationship is uniquely intimate and comprehensive, at least from the child’s perspective. A child’s relationship to his biological parents is the closest of that child’s human relationships. It is identity-determining. To be born of different parents is to be an entirely different person. This, combined with the observation that receiving proper care is crucial for the child’s current and future well-being, implies that biological parents are the ones with the strongest obligation to ensure that their child is well-cared-for.

When someone makes the claim that they have a right to produce a birth certificate containing two mothers and no father as the biological record of the child’s birth, they undermine the right of the child to know his genetic history. If marriage includes unions other than those between a man and a woman, it undermines the creation ordinance designed to be the avenue of procreation and perpetuation of the human race. This is not an undue hardship placed on the couple by the state. It is Biology 101.

In just the last two months, marriage amendments have been overturned by judicial action in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Texas. Seventeen other states allow same-sex marriage (or are in the process of allowing it). In addition, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder just recently told state attorneys general that they are not obligated to defend traditional marriage laws in court if they do not want to do so.

I tell my classes every semester that our children will grow up with a different understanding of marriage than what we have. I have been fighting and praying that we would be able to stave off the redefinition of marriage. Now it seems that the U.S. Supreme Court will have no choice but to hear these cases and rule on them, potentially providing a new definition of marriage.

Honestly, I am not optimistic about any future SCOTUS rulings; however, we do not place our hope in judges, governors, legislators, or presidents. Instead, our hope is in Jesus Christ, and he has already declared:

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. (Matthew 19:4-6)

*If you are interested in learning more about how to respond to the campaign to redefine marriage, consider attending the It Takes a Family conference on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, co-hosted by the Ruth Institute and the Land Center for Cultural Engagement, on April 11, 2014. More information and registration is available by clicking here.

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Edgar Walters, “Federal judge rules Texas’ gay marriage ban unconstitutional,” Star-Telegram, February 26, 2014.

Melissa Moschella, “The Rights of Children: Biology Matters,” The Public Discourse, February 20, 2014.

ObamaCare, Contraception, and the War on Women

~ Evan Lenow ~ 3 Comments

What is the war on women? The phrase has been used by various political groups to characterize attitudes related to the perspective on women’s roles in the home and workplace. In recent days, the idea of a war on women has been used to describe the debate over whether or not the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., ObamaCare) should provide all forms of FDA-approved contraceptives to women at no cost to them. The typical accusations of a war against women have been lobbed against conservatives who seek to limit the government’s role in providing contraceptives.

Now it seems that a new front of the war on women has been opened, but this time it comes from a very unlikely place–progressives attempting to justify the contraceptive mandate of ObamaCare.

A number of articles have appeared in recent days highlighting a series of ads produced by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado. These ads seek to explain why young adults, particularly young women, should sign up for insurance on the new health exchanges.

Even though there are a few different versions, the theme of these advertisements directed at women is that you need free contraceptives in order to participate in promiscuous sexual activity without regret. Without these free contraceptives, you may not be able to “enjoy” the liberation of your sexuality.

In an interview with The Denver Post, Amy Runyon-Harms, executive director of ProgressNow Colorado, attempted to justify the ads promoting promiscuous behavior. She stated, “People get upset when you portray women as independent. We think this ad is really about healthy relationships and that people are taking control of their lives with health care.”

The problem with these ads is twofold. First, they objectify women by speaking of them in exclusively sexual terms. In one of the ads, a cut-out of Ryan Gosling is portrayed as being “excited about getting to know” the real-life girl pictured in the ad. His excitement stems from the fact that she has easy access to birth control.

This perspective on women is demeaning and unbiblical. Yes, God created man and woman with a sexual nature (He told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply in Genesis 1:28). However, we are all much more than our sexuality. We are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27) and have value as persons in that image, not simply because we have a sexual nature.

Second, these ads promote risky sexual behavior with a false sense of security. Simply limiting the possibility of pregnancy does not make sexual activity outside of marriage safe, much less commendable. The hook-up culture of college campuses leads to a host of problems including sexually transmitted infections, pornography, emotional attachment, and potential violence. Contraceptives do not address these issues. Giving a false sense of security through free birth control pills only exacerbates the problem.

This is why God’s design for sexuality is that it should only be expressed within the context of marriage. In Hebrews 13:4 we read, “Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” Many people may look this verse and say that the Bible is stuck in the Dark Ages. However, the reality is that God’s design for sex exclusively within marriage is the safest and most fulfilling option.

Is there a war on women? There certainly seems to be, but it is not what you may have been led to believe. The war on women is being waged by groups like ProgressNow Colorado who view women as nothing but objects of sexual desire. Instead, we need to proclaim that women find their true value in the fact that they are made in the image of God.

*I apologize for posting the content of the ads in the pictures on this blog post, but I felt it was necessary to see that they are actually real. The rest of the ads can be found at http://www.doyougotinsurance.com.

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Kurtis Lee, “Pro-Obamacare ads targeting millennials stir controversy in Colorado,” The Denver Post, November 12, 2013.

Emily Miller, “MILLER: New Obamacare ads make young women look like sluts,” The Washington Times, November 12, 2013.