Return to Grace

[Valin]

The American Spectator:

Tim Goeglein, President George W. Bush's prodigal aide, has found redemption.
Jonathan Aitken
October 2011

The George W. Bush presidency has found its Samuel Pepys.

This chronicler is Timothy S. Goeglein, who, by his own endearingly modest account, was neither particularly senior nor influential in the administration's pecking order. His career trajectory was limited, ending in tears when he had to resign over a plagiarism scandal. But he kept his records and he knows how to write.

Sometimes it is the unobtrusive observers of White House life who provide the freshest insights into a president's character. Goeglein was a West Wing insider for seven years. He worked as Karl Rove's assistant and deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison -- the underestimated switchboard where faith and politics get connected.

From this vantage point Goeglein gives an account that reveals much that is new about the 43rd president. The author's own fall from grace forms a complementary story from the viewpoint of a zealous fellow conservative and occasional presidential prayer partner who passed through fires of failure and humiliation on his road back to redemption.

Goeglein was caught red-handed as a serial plagiarizer in the columns he was writing for his Indiana hometown newspaper. He immediately resigned from the administration, never expecting to see George W. Bush again.

But behind the public departure came private forgiveness. Summoned to the Oval Office for what he expected to be "a woodshed moment," Goeglein was welcomed by President Bush with the words "Tim, I have known mercy and grace in my own life and I am offering it to you now….I want you to know that you are forgiven."

(Snip)

TIM GOEGLEIN WORKS HARD to persuade his readers that George W. Bush was a good president. Opinions on this will differ. But where this account really succeeds is in allowing Bush to emerge as a good man. He comes over as thoroughly decent and devout. He never dissembles. He has an exemplary family life. His prayerful faith is sincere. He may have delegated too much on economic issues but he delivered on his own highest priority, which was strengthening America in the prevention of terrorism at home.

These qualities may well have helped to bring out the values voters. Like many of his former targets, Goeglein responds instinctively to George W. Bush's virtues even though he can be myopic about his hero's faults. But the author evidently feels, as the biographer of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone said of his subject: "It was the character breathing through the sentences that counted."

(Snip)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOxIWAhauGY

The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era