Pandering To America's Madrassas

Monica Goodling should be disbarred, for Jesus!


Back in the days when playing ethnic politics was a rite of passage for Democrats seeking the presidency, candidates traditionally made pandering pilgrimages to Ireland, Israel and Italy.

These destinations were known as the Three I League for the old minor league that consisted solely of baseball teams from Illinois, Indiana and Iowa.

There isn't an “I” in the 21st century equivalent of the Three I League but there are three major political destinations — ultra-conservative Christian colleges where Republican presidential hopefuls journey to convince the religious righteous of their own orthodoxy: Bob Jones University in South Carolina and Liberty and Regent universities in Virginia.

It all began eight years ago when candidate George W. Bush made a controversial appearance at Bob Jones, named for the first pop evangelist whose collection plate netted enough to start a college. After the speech, Bush claimed he didn't know the school barred interracial dating or viewed the Catholic and Mormon religions as cults.

But he must have been pleased with President Bob Jones III's credo: “If the media likes a candidate then all decent people should not vote for that candidate.” Bush's main opponent, the reporters' favorite, John McCain, was not invited to speak at the school and South Carolina's “decent” people gave Bush enough primary votes to begin a winning streak that led to the nomination.

Having learned that lesson, McCain began his 2008 campaign with an early visit to the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University where he received an honorary degree and where his description of Fallwell and his fellow televangelist Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” in the 2000 campaign was forgotten by all parties, at least for now.

The Christain college circuit

McCain's major opponents, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have also embarked on the Christian college circuit, with visits scheduled to Robertson's Regent University, which was founded just 30 years ago as CBN University. CBN stood for Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network until it changed its name to Regent. “Hail to thee, Christian Broadcasting Network University” probably didn't work as a lyric in the alma mater.

Robertson has made the Mormon Romney his commencement speaker this May, to the consternation of many of the faithful in the student body and alumni who, like the brothers and sisters at Bob Jones, consider the candidates' religions — Giuliani is Catholic — to be cults.

Regent, the youngest of the three citadels of old-time religion, has been getting unwelcome attention recently for its law school, which was founded in 1986 after the Bob Jones law school folded and sent Robertson its books. Despite being tied for 136th among law schools in the annual US News rankings of colleges, Regent is treated as if it's Harvard or Yale Law by the Bush Administration. On its Web site, Regent has boasted 150 of its law graduates are employed by the administration, many in the Justice Department.

Or make that 149 with the loss of one in the Justice Department now that Monica Goodling, Regent's most well known graduate after Miss America 1999, has resigned as chief counsel and White House liaison for Attorney General pro tem Alberto Gonzales.

Before resigning, Goodling let it be known she would seek Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination when asked to testify before Congress in the scandal surrounding the firing of those U.S. attorneys. She must have been absent from law school the day they taught it would be unseemly for a Justice Department employee to take the Fifth in an investigation of the Justice Department and she was allowed to resign without even a Medal of Freedom from the president.

All of 33 and with limited lawyering experience, Goodling was one of a small number of Justice officials overseeing the firings. She got her job, along with the scores of other Regent alumni, when the federal government's chief personnel officer was former Regent Dean Kay Cole James.
Here's where it gets good. Dean James left the government in 2005 to take a job with businessman Mitchell Wade, according to Paul Krugman of The New York Times. Wade turned out to be the guy who bribed Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham, who was sent to prison by U.S. attorney Carol Lam. And Lam was one of the U.S. attorneys fired by Goodling and her fellow Bushies.

What a small world the Bush White House is. Small in every sense.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.

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