The plus side? Since I hadn't reduced taxes, the odds were that we could pay for a lot of the cleanup. We weren't in a deficit situation and trying to pay for two wars off the books. It makes a big difference if you can go into a disaster with some money in the bank. It doesn't matter whether you are an individual, a family, or a country, the principle is the same. Our national credit rating was still exceptionally good, and if we did need to borrow, going into a deficit (quite probable, actually) would be a manageable situation, and one we could get out of in a year or two. Once again, I needed to figure out how not to let a perfectly good crisis go to waste. It is appallingly cold blooded, but that was how the game was played at this level. Maybe we could do something about the national flood insurance program, environmental concerns, and the like. I wasn't sure if I could pull it off, though. My popularity ratings continued to drop, and were now into the mid 40s.
The real plus side? My message that we were all Americans and we all needed to join together took real traction. Millions of people had been displaced by the storms, some for weeks and some for what looked to be many months, if not longer. All across the country, Americans were taking in their fellow citizens, providing temporary housing and food and support. Convoys of food and water, clothing, toys, and building supplies were pouring in from all over the nation. Utility crews were being rushed from all over America. Unsurprisingly, the youngest Americans took it to heart the most. College students were using their breaks and vacations to head south to help in the cleanup. Marilyn and I discovered this firsthand, when Holly and Molly announced they were going with some college friends down to New Orleans to help over the Christmas break. We simply nodded and Marilyn loaned them her American Express card for the trip. I knew the twins would be buying more than necessities with it; a close look at the next bill would probably end up showing thousands of dollars of emergency and relief supplies that I would turn a blind eye to. We had raised some good kids.
We stumbled through the end of 2005 without suffering anything else major happening. That didn't mean we got away scot-free. I was in a fairly routine press conference in mid-November, discussing some budget plans and the proposed Congressional hearings related to Katrina, when a question was lobbed out of the blue at me. "Mister President, how do you feel about Kansas requiring that creationism be taught in their schools?"
I had to blink for a second at that. Somewhere in America, every day of the year, somebody is trying to stop teaching evolution and begin teaching creationism instead. The latest round was when the Kansas Board of Education had some fundamentalists elected, and they promptly began phony hearings to discuss the 'controversy.' Just a week ago they had passed their new rules. Generally I had avoided this sort of thing. The scientists and judges would eventually win, and I wasn't going to convince any of the fundamentalists anyway.
Now somebody had dropped it in my lap. I needed this like I needed more holes in the head. After a second, I answered, "Well, I think it is the right of the citizens of Kansas to teach their children the way they see fit. If that means they want to stop teaching science and start teaching the Bible, then I suppose that is okay. On the other hand, it is also the right of every accreditation board in Kansas to yank the accreditation of any school that teaches creationism, and it is also the right of every college around the country to refuse to admit students who haven't been properly taught science."
That set a fox in the hen house! Punish children for the mistakes of their parents? How dare I suggest such an inhumane thing! More than a few op-ed pieces agreed with me, but not all. A number of newspapers, mostly from rural areas, railed about how Washington was taking over local education, and how much better children would be learning the values of their parents and communities, and how education was historically a state and local matter, and how I had overstepped my bounds by weighing in on the subject. I tried to stay out of it, since I was figuring the matter would eventually blow over. Sooner or later the fine citizens of Kansas would come to their senses and toss out the religious right.
Will and Frank came to me and asked me if I wanted to speak on this in some public forum. I looked aghast at this, and answered, "Not on your life! You want me tarred and feathered!?"
Will replied, "There are a lot of religious groups that want to ask your feelings on things."
"And that is exactly why I don't want to answer them! Ever heard that a little religion goes a long, long way? Will, we do not want to fight this fight."
"How so, Mister President?", asked Frank.
"Because religion makes no sense. You can't mix religion with science and math. The religious folks want me to be a true believer, and I'm not all that true. If I say that evolution is correct, then I am telling them that the Bible is wrong. There are huge numbers of people who believe that Jesus personally wrote the Bible in 17th Century English. Well, he didn't, and you know it. It's entirely possible the man couldn't even read and write, and if he did, it would have been in Aramaic! Do you think I actually want to get into this on national television?"
"So, how do you reconcile the facts?', he asked. "I'm just curious, is all."
I smiled at that. "The same way most of us do, by picking and choosing and ignoring what I don't understand. Am I a Christian? Yes, but not one who's all that fired up. They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and I've been in a foxhole, and that is true. Us scientific types believe in the Big Bang which started everything. Great, but somebody had to light the fuse, right? Let's leave it at that."
I refused to get dragged any further into this. The religious right did not have a friend in me, and they knew it. They had learned that very early on in my first term, when I refused to put into law any restrictions on stem cell research. George had planned a ban on research, and I shitcanned that, just about the same time I cleaned out the Faith Based Initiatives group. Likewise I had studiously stayed out of the Terry Schiavo case, refusing to allow the Justice Department into that mess, and counseling Jeb Bush to leave it alone. The same was true with my stance on gay rights. I was the only Republican to have voted against the Defense of Marriage Act when it passed in 1996. It wasn't so much a matter of gay rights (I wasn't 'Don't ask, don't tell', I was 'Don't ask, don't care.') as the fact that the law was unconstitutional on its face. These were fights I was never going to win.
Meanwhile, John began ramping up his campaign, and began flying out to Iowa and New Hampshire on a regular basis. I advised him to feel relatively free to publicly disassociate himself from some of my positions, though I was sure that was going to bite the both of us in the ass. For instance, I had managed to avoid supporting ethanol for fuel throughout the last campaign, since I didn't have to campaign in Iowa for the primary. Personally, I thought that using corn for fuel instead of for food was moronic! John was not going to have that luxury. He was going to need to campaign, and in Iowa, and somebody was going to ask him.
He wasn't the only one running, of course. Oh, no question, he was the front runner, and the strong favorite, but there were a bunch of others. Whatever unanimity the party had was breaking down. Mike Huckabee was the former governor of Arkansas (a job Bill Clinton once held) and was the vanguard of the Religious Right. Ron Paul, a Congressman from Texas, was pushing his Libertarian agenda, and Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was pushing his business credentials. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, was riding his leadership during 9-11 in the hopes of moving into the big leagues. There were others, too, without a hope in hell, but looking for support. Nobody had officially announced they were in the running, but everybody was forming exploratory committees dedicated to exploring for money and support among the local party faithful.