On the October 17 edition of CNN's American Morning, co-host Soledad O'Brien accused David Kuo, the former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President Bush, of writing a “very political book.” Kuo is the author of Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (Free Press, October 2006), which contends that that the Bush White House has contempt for Christian conservatives, pandering to them for votes but breaking promises on policy and referring to them as “the nuts,” “insane,” and “ridiculous” behind closed doors; O'Brien's assertion that Kuo's book is “very political” came just moments after Kuo explicitly said it “isn't primarily a political book” and that “it's an intensely personal book.” But in accusing Kuo of writing a “political” book and asserting that the timing of its release was “interesting,” O'Brien ignored comments that Kuo and his former boss, John J. Dilulio Jr., had previously made that are consistent with the claims made in Tempting Faith. Indeed, O'Brien did not once mention Kuo's previous statements or Dilulio, even while getting a “rebuttal” from Jim Towey, Dilulio's successor as director of the faith-based office, who claimed that “it's hard to believe” that Kuo would be presenting his assertions about the White House “now, a couple weeks before an election.”

Kuo's book does not mark the first time he or his former boss has alleged that the Bush administration used religious conservatives for political ends but didn't -- or wouldn't -- deliver on its promises to that constituency, as Media Matters for America has noted. In February 2005, Kuo wrote in an article for Beliefnet.com that the Bush White House didn't care about actually funding faith-based initiatives, only that the White House successfully conveyed the appearance of caring. “The Faith-Based Office was the cross around the White Houses' [sic] neck showing the president's own faith orientation. That was sufficient,” Kuo wrote. “I left the White House in December 2003. By that time, I'd grown quite frustrated with White House and Congressional approaches to faith-based issues and I let those in power know it.” Kuo also wrote that congressional Republicans' “snoring indifference” hindered faith-based efforts.

Dilulio, who resigned in August 2001 as head of the administration's office of faith-based initiatives after six months on the job, has made similar comments regarding the political nature of religion in the Bush White House. While describing himself as a supporter of the president, according to journalist Ron Suskind, Dilulio said that in the Bush White House “everything -- and I mean everything” was run by the “political arm,” and that policy simply wasn't taken seriously. Dilulio told Suskind: “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. ... What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.” (Dilulio later apologized, calling his own remarks “groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples.”)

In contrast to O'Brien's interview, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, during an interview with Towey on the October 13 edition of Tucker, said: “I've been around political people on both sides my whole adult life, and all of them have contempt for evangelicals, so far as I can tell. All the Republican political consultants I know have pure contempt for evangelicals. But they know the party needs them, but they're -- they themselves are secular, completely, utterly secular.”

From the October 17 edition of CNN's American Morning:

O'BRIEN: You write about a meeting, and here's what you say: “National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person, then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ridiculous, out of control, goofy.” Were you at meetings when that happened?

KUO: Oh, abso--

O'BRIEN: Who were the people doing that?

KUO: You know what's interesting about all of this is, you know, there's been this controversy that's erupted over this. I don't think there are very many people in politics who deal with Christian conservatives who haven't had the same experience. I got an email from a friend last night who worked on the 2000 campaign, who said, “You know, what you describe is exactly my experience. You know, I was a social conservative, and heck, I got forced out of the White House for exactly that reason.”

O'BRIEN: Who were the people, though, saying that person's goofy, that person's ridiculous, that person's out of control?

KUO: You know, it's interesting --

O'BRIEN: Because you don't name names in the book.

KUO: No, because, you know, this book isn't primarily a political book. You know, I write this -- this is intend -- it really is --

O'BRIEN: It's kind of a book in a big political context, certainly.

KUO: But if you read the book from start to finish, it's an intensely personal book. It talks about my own experience being a Christian in the political world. It talks about my own problems that I've run into dealing with politics, you know, and how much it can hurt you personally, the price you pay for putting politics on an altar that's above God.

And so when I referenced this in the book, I did it as something to be informative, not to be a whistleblower on any particular person. I didn't want to name a particular person, and I certainly didn't want to name the names that I heard the Christian leaders called, because I didn't want them embarrassed publicly.

O'BRIEN: Well, but then, at the same time, it's all in the book, just not actually names, so in some ways you sort of go halfway.

[...]

O'BRIEN: Interesting timing. David Kuo. The book is called Tempting Faith. There are not a lot of books that I can finish in time, read cover to cover. This is one that I did, though. It's a really interesting book, but it's also a very political book as well. Thanks for talking with us. We certainly appreciate it.

KUO: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

[...]

O'BRIEN: Just before the break, you heard from David Kuo about his book called Tempting Faith. Let's turn now to Jim Towey. He was David Kuo's boss in the Bush White House, the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2002 to 2006. He's now the president of St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania. He's in Pittsburgh this morning for us. Nice to see you, sir. Thanks for talking with us.

TOWEY: Great to be with you.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much. I know you've taken great exception to some of the things that David's written. Where's he wrong?

TOWEY: Well, I think he allows the impression that this wasn't a priority of the president, that it looked like it was a political operation. And I ran the office, I was involved in making these decisions and working with senior staff, and the fact is, we focused the initiative on the poor. We steered clear of politics as much as we could, and the reality is, faith-based initiative has accomplished great things, and the poor are better off for it.

So when you see accusations that come from 2002, when he and I worked closely together, it's hard to believe that he'd be presenting them now, a couple weeks before an election, and it makes you wonder why you would be doing something like this. So, yeah, I guess a lot of us who worked with him at the White House are very surprised and very puzzled by what he's saying. And some of things are just factually inaccurate, so it's been frustrating to watch this.

O'BRIEN: So when you -- when he writes about national Christian leaders receiving hugs and smiles in person but then being dismissed and dissed, really, behind their backs, that's not accurate?

TOWEY: I don't know what David saw, but I know what I saw. And I worked there four and a half years. And the president set a tone of great respect for the religious leadership of our country of all faiths. And when evangelicals like [Prison Fellowship Ministries founder] Chuck Colson and Rick Warren [author of The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (Zondervan, 2002)], and Dr. [James C.] Dobson [Focus on the Family founder and chairman] and Pat Robertson and others were around the president or with senior staff, there was a lot of respect. Sure, there was disagreement, but the kind of offensive name-calling and mocking, I never saw that. Now, maybe at the junior level, you might have young aides doing that, but nowhere where serious decision-making was made did you see that, so yeah, I -- completely opposite from what I saw.

O'BRIEN: Now, no one would claim that David Kuo is Karl Rove or anything like Karl Rove, but he certainly wasn't the guy who was fetching coffee, either, for everybody. I mean, he was a deputy on your staff. He was certainly high enough up hierarchically, right, to be able to report accurately on what he saw?

TOWEY: Well, I don't know what he saw. But, for example, you'll see footage where it'll show his photo on Air Force One. That was taken right before he left. He had asked if he could go on the Air Force One once, and I gave up my seat so he could go. And -- but yet it projects a certain gravitas like he was on Air Force One all the time. It's not to be personal, but I do think it's dangerous when you allow this impression that he was in senior staff, in the thick of things. He couldn't go into the Oval Office unless a senior staff person invited him to come along to a meeting.

So I just think that, while he's entitled to his opinions and -- about -- and I know he cares about the poor, but when it comes to trying to project as an insider what was going on in the White House, I think it's a false image that he's projected, and a lot of us are puzzled by it. Because when he left the White House, he had very laudatory things to say about President Bush and us, so you know, I think it's fair enough for him to comment on religion and politics, but when you start giving a false impression of what life in the White House was like, yeah, a lot of us take objection to that.

O'BRIEN: Jim Towey joining us this morning with a rebuttal to Tempting Faith, David Kuo's book. Thanks for talking with us. We certainly appreciate it.

TOWEY: Happy to be on with you.

From the October 13 edition of MSNBC's Tucker:

CARLSON: His -- one of the points in his book appears to be that the staff at the White House overseeing religious initiatives was much more secular than the people they were working with in the evangelical community, and that they had secretly, privately contempt for evangelicals. You never sensed that?

TOWEY: Never. I mean, maybe there was some low-level staff that would roll their eyes when someone came by, but in the White House, from the president on down, there was a profound respect for the religious leadership of our country, people of different denominations and faiths. And I never saw that. And I met with all of those leaders, and that was my job.

CARLSON: There is a feeling --

TOWEY: Again, that's why we're --

CARLSON: I'm sorry. I beg your pardon?

TOWEY: I was just saying, that's why a lot of us are surprised. Because you know, [former Bush aide] Mike Gerson -- there are some wonderful people that I worked with at the White House, and none of us can make sense of the suggestion that people had anything but the highest respect for the evangelical community and for the leadership of other faiths. I mean, President Bush set the tone, and he wouldn't have tolerated any disrespect.

CARLSON: Boy, I've been around political people on both sides my whole adult life, and all of them have contempt for evangelicals, so far as I can tell. All the Republican political consultants I know have pure contempt for evangelicals. But they know the party needs them, but they're -- they themselves are secular, completely, utterly secular. You not seeing that phenomenon?

TOWEY: No. Well, I mean, I start with myself. I went to Mass every morning.

CARLSON: Yeah.

TOWEY: There are a lot of people there that were serving the president that also felt they were following the commitment to their own faith, Jewish, Christian, Catholic, different denominations. So no, I don't -- I think the idea that somehow there's this horde of secular employees with disdain for the evangelical community and others is just not anything I experienced when I worked there.

CARLSON: I wonder why, though -- I mean, many sincere evangelicals voted for the president, because they thought he would get their agenda enacted into law. And at the very top of that agenda, you know, is curbing abortion. And it's not clear to me what exactly the president has done to lower the number of abortions in this country. So he has failed them, hasn't he?