GEORGE BUSH, COMPULSIVE GOD-BOTHERER

Before telling us what a hard-nosed bargainer Bush is when talking to the Iraqi prime minister (wow, Bush got the Iraqis to cut their summer vacation from two months to a month!), Jim Rutenberg and Alissa Rubin of The New York Times hint that Bush can't get anything done in talks with the prime minister because he keeps getting distracted by his own theories about God:

Once every two weeks, sometimes more often, President Bush gathers with the vice president and the national security adviser in the newly refurbished White House Situation Room and peers, electronically, into the eyes of the man to whom his legacy is so inextricably linked: Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq.

...Sometimes, said an official who has sat in on the meetings, they talk about their faith in God.

"They talk about the challenges they face being leaders," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss private conversations. "They, of course, also share a faith in God."

The official declined to elaborate on the extent of their religious discussions, but said, "It is an issue that comes up between two men who are believers in difficult times, who are being challenged."...

What the hell do they talk about when they talk about God? Or, more precisely, what does Bush talk about? (You just know that, when the topic turns to the Almighty, Bush is doing most of the talking.)

I assume the conversation focuses on Bush's cockamamie theory that God has structured human nature and the universe to favor governments of a kind Bush likes -- a theory contradicted by, well, pretty much all of human history.

Here's Bush in Nashville last Thursday, responding to a reporter's question:

I'm a big believer in the universality of liberty. I believe deep in everybody's soul -- I'll take it a step further -- I believe in an Almighty, and I believe a gift from that Almighty to each man, woman and child is the desire to be free. And I believe that exists in everybody's soul is the desire to be free.... I believe, if given a chance, people will take a -- will choose liberty.

That's how Bush sees the world: Unless really mean bad guys intercede, "each man, woman and child" will simply choose to live in a liberal democracy, or something close to one. Bush's worldview makes no provision for ethnic anger, religious conflict, class conflict, or the fact that all sorts of "men, women and children" are themselves tyrants or willing subjects of tyrants.

Bush's problem, therefore, isn't that he's deeply religious. It's that his particular view of how God functions in the world is that of an uninformed simpleton.

But this is probably what he yammers on about in these videoconferences with Maliki, and Maliki probably just suppresses a sigh and says, "Yes, George, you're right. God is great."