The Company He Keeps
Bush's speech at Bob Jones University will haunt him
Paisley has made more than 50 trips to speak at Bob Jones University. On a 1981 trip, Paisley gave the opening prayer in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Catholics were outraged. When House Speaker Ramon Schwartz, an Episcopalian, apologized to the state's Catholics, Bob Jones wrote him an angry letter. "Your weakness and folly were apparent to all," he wrote. "As a Protestant I will be expecting an apology from you the next time you invite a priest to pray in the House." That same year, Bob Jones University asked the Reagan administration to grant it tax-exempt status despite the fact that it was practicing racial discrimination. The administration said yes, but retreated after a storm of pro-test. Partly out of embarrassment, the administration decided to deny the incendiary Paisley a visa in 1982. Angry over this denial, Bob Jones Jr. called on God to smite Secretary of State Alexander Haig "hip and thigh, bone and marrow, heart and lungs." Jones charged that the action by Haig, a Catholic, was "absolutely nothing but Catholic bigotry," and for good measure he called Pope John Paul II a "perfect example of Antichrist."
George W. Bush is a decent and honorable man. What was he doing at Bob Jones University? "When I go to speak to voters," he said in a TV interview, "I don't necessarily have to embrace the policies of the university." That's a fair point. But when the host or sponsor is that far from your own principles, you have to say something about it in your speech or not go at all. Alan Keyes spoke at Bob Jones, too. Keyes is a living symbol of everything Bob Jones seems to resent: He is a black Roman Catholic who must have dated interracially, since his wife is from India. Keyes did the right thing. He spoke about the need for racial and religious tolerance. Bush didn't. He made a mistake, and unless he returns to the issue he will pay a price. Here in New York, for instance, blacks don't vote in Republican primaries, but Catholics do: 46 percent of registered Republicans are Catholics. Most of them know who Ian Paisley is and what he represents. No, this issue isn't going away on its own.
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