Piety in the Bunker

Garry Wills PIETY IN THE BUNKER Religiosity is the last refuge of impeachable Presidents ANDREW CARNEGIE: This is Woods; Robert Ahplanalp (a Villa- Bebe. He had a slick White House Christian country. nova product). The Christian Sci- chaplain—who is his own order's MARK TWAIN: Why, Carnegie, entists banished or jailed, only the pariah. He was worshiped—but by so is hell. But we don't brag of Catholics were left inside to en- a corrupt Korean regime's least hon- this. courage outside fanatics like Sun orable extension. And he had a rabbi HIS NATION IS GOD'S NATION. The Moon and Rabbi Korff. who cast himself as a stand-in for "offi"officece of the President of the Dr. Johnson said patriotism is the all our dead ex-Presidents. There is United States is, therefore, sacred." last refuge of scoundrels. That's something very sad about such large That is the gospel of the Reverend wrong. Religion is. It perfectly fit claims when they come marched out Sun Myung Moon. When Nixon, Nixon's hope that we would not no- by such a crew of moral dwarfs. playing Mr. Bones to Mr. Moon, tice him, so awed were we to be by came out of the White House last his office. He was serving, by saving, December 13 to greet his disciples the Presidency—as his flunkies bur- The Reverend Moon of the Freedom Leadership Founda- gled and lied, in 1972, to reelect the tion, they knelt down to worship President. There is a double with- TN HIS DEMONSTRATIONS and lobby- him. That was as good an indication drawal—from the Presidency to any ' ings, this right-wing version of as we needed at the time of Mr. one particular President, and from Maharaj Ji used the motto "God Nixon's desperation. Only the idol- "the President" to mere Richard loves Richard Nixon." That could he aters were left in his retinue. When Nixon. Nixon was an admittedly un- a deep theological statement, an at- a man has sacrificed all honor, he worthy upholder of his position's tempt to provoke God into theodicy. must settle for adoration. The poor majesty—which is just the approach The Lord boasted to Job about Be- Roman emperors had no way left to that allows any Pope to combine per- hemoth and Leviathan, like a parent get their fellows' attention but to sonal humility and institutional gran- proud of even ill-favored children. make themselves gods. deur. The theological formula is ex But he must be tempted to hide Nothing crazier could have been opere operato—that is, sacramental Nixon somewhere in the last row imagined than for Richard Nixon— miracles are wrought "by the effi- when trying to explain his universe. the voice of the South and the Bible ciency of the ceremony itself"—not, Yet Mr. Moon did not mean it that Belt, of Middle American Protes- in the first place, ex opere operantis, way—he obviously considered Mr. tantism, of antipornography law- "by the efficiency of the celebrant." Nixon one of God's better strokes, a and-order—to be incensed by an So we are to forget the lecher inside thing to boast of. Isn't he powerful? Oriental power; unless it were for the confessional box, or the drunk- He leads the world's greatest em- him to trot out a Jesuit casuist to ard at the altar—forget the man, and pire. What further sign do we need justify these ceremonies. Back in think only of his vestments, the in- of the heavenly favor? 1960, the Reverend Norman Vincent signia, the paraphernalia of office. Caliban said that his colonizers Peale endorsed Richard Nixon in or- Mr. Nixon was a mere appendage to had taught him a language in which der to keep Mr. Kennedy and John the spirit of '76, and we must bend he could curse them. We taught Sun XXIII out of the White House. And our knees to It, no matter who its Moon a religious vocabulary in even this summer some regions of occupant might be. Nixon presided which to bless us—but his blessings the dark outback called the attempted over his own Presidency as its litur- are a curse. We taught him that God impeachment of Nixon a Catholic gist. And this plainest of men made loves a succeeder—not like that plot (just look at those weird Italian it the gaudiest of principalities. prodigal Son of his who went off names--Rodino! Sirica! ). Mean- When seized with self-doubt, he so- and got crucified and had to be dis- while, Nixon, digging in for the last laced himself with palaces. assault, drew his Catholic Mafia close Yet, even as the priest-king, he Garry Wills, a syndicated columnist, is the author of Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the around him—General Haig, more had to settle for a sorry crew of Self-Made Man (Houghton Mifflin) and Bare fierce in piety than his Jesuit broth- diviners and haruspices. He had a Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radi- er; Pat Buchanan and Rose Mary millionaire valet—but it was just cal Religion (Doubleday). 18 owned. True, the crucified later got impaled on gold instruments of tor- ture, to bleed rubies—and then he was let back into the family. But on terms. That is the religion we taught our subject colonies, and Moon comes in- nocently to remind us of it, and get paid. Make a buck for God. How many guns does the Pope have? Not many—not nearly as many as Mr. Nixon had. So Nixon was our Pope. The great Korean succeeder, reported to be worth $10 million, comes to his mother country (the colonizing one ) to show us he has built a better churchmouse-trap. Once emperors become gods, the empire sends back from its fringes rather embarrassing forms of cult offering. The surprising thing is that mainline Protestants go along with this Oriental cult. Or perhaps it is not so surprising. All absolutisms in ruin tend to lean upon each other. God as a daddy with some power left to spank has gone into hiding, and only the nuclear hickory stick looks credible still. In that sense, Nixon did more to bail out God than vice versa. The trading of absolutisms was something we became familiar with in the Fifties, when there were so many converters from Communism to Christ. Even Whittaker Chambers gave up one faith to embrace Rich- ard Nixon and Christianity. The Col- sons of this world have just gone one step farther, giving up even Nixon for Christ. But far more try to cling to both at the same time-- and even tend to mix them up. Even a rabbi like Baruch Korff compared Nixon to a Christ betrayed by Ju- dases of the media. Baruch Korff FEW MONTHS AGO, the front pages of our newspapers showed Mr. Nixon accepting, with a rather apprehensive look, a very slim volume of his praises from an in- veterate self-praiser named Korff. The President had good reason for uneasiness—Korff had, among other things, just tried to incite the Vice- President of the United States to dis- obey the Constitution. But if Nixon was not going to take his book from this source, where else could he look? You may have noticed that Mr. Nixon's grand reign produced no celebratory literary work. This was PIETY IN THE BUNKER not for lack of trying. Early in Nix- "digressions." But women should be on's reign, a Time reporter sent me an kept in their place, so men can be interoffice memo from Washington "aggressive and domineering." Sons, which said there was a hunt on for he added, should never "see their an official biographer. There was rea- fathers yield to their mothers." His son to hope, at that point, for some- swagger is paired with a cringe, forg- one respectable, which ruled out ing a link between him and the re- some of the obvious hacks who had sentful client: "The entire adminis- written about him before. I later tration is held captive by the Wash- asked Pat Buchanan if the hunt had ington Post. I feel like I am in been successful, and he said it had: Hanoi and not in Washington." Both Jeffrey Hart, a National Review edi- Korff and the President are martyrs tor, had been anointed and had gone to their religion, which is their selves. to work. The plan was for the book The Rabbi feels Mr. Nixon would to be ready by the 1972 election, but not indulge in racial epithets—not Hart told me his publishers had that it would make any difference if some objection to his first manu- he did: "Frankly, I have referred to script. ( He was pretending that the my friends as that goy or that shik- book was not authorized.) Then sa." We are not told what these ac- James Buckley, National Review's quaintances call the Rabbi. candidate for anything, came out for Mr. Nixon's resignation. The book is not expected to appear. So John McLaughlin, S.J. Nixon, who turned down the hacks, had to settle for a kook named Korff. ATHER MC LAUGHLIN is a dis- Rabbi Korff's religion seems to be rplaced parson. He was not part of Rabbi Korff, so maybe he does not the Catholic old guard at the White belong in this survey. He presents House—he began to see the ex-Pres- himself as filling in for all the ex- ident about the same time, and for Presidents who died recently and the same reason, that Korff saw him.

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