Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Thinkin' 'bout Brownback

What strikes you as the most intriguing thing mentioned in this WaPo article about Kansas senator Sam Brownback?

  • He has no problem talking about his faith. It has become somewhat fashionable these days, but of course many would talk of their faith and then say something like I won't let it affect my political decisions, which is total "bill tush" because they can't help but allow personal opinions to affect policy matters.
  • He thinks that having surgeries to remove some melanoma "was a great season in life."
  • He grew up in a Methodist church, attended a nondenominational evangelical church for many years, and recently became Catholic.
  • He attends church twice on Sundays - once to Mass, once to the same nondenom church where his wife is still a member.
  • He talks about his desire to love somebody instead of judging them.
  • He calls WaPo a "primarily liberal publication" to its face and totally gets away with it.
  • A "divine intervention" caused him to push for an African American history museum in the Smithsonian complex.
  • Reading the Koran has deepened his appreciation for his Christian faith.
  • When talking about running for president in 2008, he says nothing about believing that God wants him to be president.

The article concludes this way:

Brownback says he imagines future generations walking the halls of Congress and nobody knowing who he was. He imagines people passing a "Brownback Room" and someone saying, "Who was he?"

Perhaps someone else might answer that Sam Brownback was a complicated man, who thought himself a servant and a potential president at the same time, who imagined his life forgotten even as he dreamed of a room named after himself.

No comments:

Post a Comment