Dealing with the Devil

Several influential black pastors who were recently courted by Bush administration officials as potential partners in crafting African relief policies are now questioning the White House commitment to the continent.

The criticism came in a letter delivered Tuesday to the White House from five of the nation’s most high-profile African American pastors. They called on the president to give his “ardent” support to a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair under which industrialized nations would double their aid to Africa by 2010. Bush rejected the proposal last week and announced that the United States would release a smaller sum, already appropriated by Congress, for aid to Africa.

The letter exposed a potentially damaging wrinkle in what has been an aggressive outreach strategy by White House officials, who view socially conservative black religious leaders as potential allies in policymaking and domestic politics…

…”Some were confused by the fact that Prime Minister Tony Blair, who stood with the president on Iraq at enormous political cost to himself, did not appear to be receiving the same level of concrete support from the president when it came to Africa,” said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a Boston pastor who backed Bush’s reelection last year and was one of the religious leaders who conferred last month with Rice. “It is our hope that the president will stand with the prime minister as strongly as the prime minister stood with him at the height of the controversy over the Iraq war.”