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By Root 1344 0

to his speeches wherever and whenever I could. Years later I realized that the three modern American master orators—Roosevelt, Reagan, and Clinton—could all speak to the millions and yet make it sound as though they were chatting to a friend. Sometimes their message would be homely and intimate, at other times more presidential and solemn. Their instinct was not just for the right word or the telling phrase, but for that right register, the appropriate tone for the event. They would lead the listener (or the viewer) seductively through their message, never an opportunity wasted. All three were the great persuaders of twentieth-century politics.60

But none of them, not even Reagan, was a fervent crusader, in the Christian sense.61 His campaign against communism, his conservative and Republican credos, were all acquired with his second marriage. Religious convictions played a relatively minor role in the careers of both Roosevelt and Clinton. But Clinton’s successor, George Walker Bush, the son of Reagan’s vice president, is different. He, like Reagan, is a convert, but unlike his predecessor he was been born into the Republican aristocracy. His conversion was from the myriad sins of the flesh (notably alcohol) to the rapture of being “reconfirmed” (his own word) in Jesus Christ. Some questioned his sincerity, but there is no evidence for such cynicism. George W. Bush is a true believer, like indeed the majority of his fellow Americans. He reads the Bible daily.62

FROM THE BEGINNING OF THIS BOOK I HAVE WORKED WITH THE NOW traditional historical assumption that, through the twentieth century, the West became increasingly secular while in the Eastern, Islamic world religious faith remained the more potent, both in society and politics. I am not suggesting the tired old fallacies about an unchanging East stuck in an immutable past, or as Edward Said memorably put it, “confined to the fixed status of an object frozen once and for all in time.” He added “by the gaze of western percipients,” but I think that is too simplistic. Other local agents, closer to home, were also implicated in that process. But while staring East I failed to notice what was happening to the West, an even odder omission since my main theme is the Bakhtinian reflexive and reactive nature of the relationship between the enemies in the mirror.

On Inauguration Day 2001, a reconfirmed, or born-again, Christian became the forty-third president of the United States. Contrary to the fears of many, but dictated by political prudence, this seemed at first to have had little effect. The second President Bush ran a traditional administration, despite the many passionate believers in its ranks. Until, that is, the cataclysm of September 1, 2001, called for a response off the scale of normal political responses. Now, thanks to Bob Woodward, no natural admirer of George Bush, we had within months of the events an insight into the conduct of affairs in the hundred days after the catastrophe in New York and Washington D.C. In Bush at War the author makes himself the omniscient narrator, who builds up his favorite characters, cheers for his heroes, and hisses at the villains. But despite this tiresome semifictive format, the important fact is the evidence on which his account is based. The sources are very solid. All the main actors in the drama spoke to him, at length, and often over several meetings. The president himself had two long, laid-back meetings with the journalist, and he described to him how he heard the news of the attack on New York and what dominated his response as seen on TV. “What you saw was my gut reaction coming out.”63

Gradually, George W. Bush learned more and more to trust those visceral responses. He intimated that meetings planning the war should begin with prayer; he said repeatedly that this was the moment that a new United States would be reborn in the eyes of the world: “I do believe there is the image of America out there that we are so materialistic, that we’re almost hedonistic, that we don’t have values, and that when struck, we wouldn