JustASC

Jonathan Tobin responds to my post about Bush’s religious language in his speech to the Knesset:

As to what I meant by calling Bush’s language “remarkable,” I can’t say that I entirely disagree with your interpretation but I don’t believe that I was specifically making a comparison and judging Bush’s supportive words as superior to those who speak of “common values.”

The use of “remarkable” was intended as a sort of “how about that?” rather than as an attempt to prove him a superior friend. It was the sort of talk that , as you put it so well, [revealed what Bush] felt in his kishkes. And, as such, I think most of us would trust anyone who cared about us in that way over, as you said, someone who intellectualized the sentiment.

So I think you’ve probably taken my thought to its logical conclusion, which is something I did not do, as the point of my column was something else.

But I think it would be wrong to say that my comment was a putdown of Reagan and Clinton in order to laud Bush. After all, I think Reagan’s attachment to Israel, while not as deeply religious as Bush’s feelings are, was also emotional rather than strictly intellectual. That’s probably also true to some extent for Clinton.

I intended to merely note that Bush spoke in the way many Jews would. I actually had a line after that in my original draft which said that his words were those which many Jews would feel uncomfortable using because they were so religious. But I wound up cutting it to save space. Hillel Halkin made something of a similar point when writing about Bush’s speech in the NY Sun this week.