Faith-based President.

IT happened on a long walk in Kennebunkport, in the summer of 1985. For George W. Bush, the result of his long conversation with family friend Billy Graham was not a "'born-again' experience," but rather a "renewal of faith." Graham, Bush recalled, "planted a mustard seed in my soul ... He led me to the path, and I began walking." In this campaign season, the religious faith of the 43rd president is one of the most consequential issues bubbling just below the surface--and sometimes even bursting into plain view. In his excellent new book God and George W. Bush: A Spiritual Life (Regan, 382 pp., $26.95), Paul Kengor--author of an earlier work on the religion of Ronald Reagan--examines his subject with sympathy and discernment.

What becomes clear in Kengor's account is that Bush impresses his fellow Evangelicals as a believer who "walks the walk"--one who "truly integrates his faith into his life." The author quotes Jack Graham, president of the 20-million-strong Southern Baptist Convention, as saying Evangelicals will turn out to vote for Bush "in record numbers": "Our people didn't quite know George Bush in the last election ... but they do now." Taken by itself, this could well make the difference in a tight contest. But what about the non-Evangelicals? Aren't millions of Americans turned off by high-octane, emotional religion--and won't they look to a cool character like Kerry to restore religious "normalcy" to the White House? Not if they really take the time to understand Bush's faith. Kengor shows that Bush's actual belief system, the source of his conduct, is far removed from the stereotype of narrow-minded religiosity that looms as a bogeyman in the sensibility of millions of Americans, not all of them political liberals.

It is worth remembering, for example, what Bush said in his 2000 convention speech: "I believe in tolerance, not in spite of my faith, but because of it. I believe in a God who calls us not to judge our neighbors, but to love them." Kengor points out that "reporters who talked to the presidential candidate about his faith were struck by its lack of self-righteousness. Journalist Joe Klein, a liberal, observed after several discussions with Bush that the governor 'never displayed the vaguest hint of dogmatism.... Quite the contrary: His faith was humble and, well, soft. ... He used words like love and heart more than any other presidential candidate I've ever seen.'"

This personal warmth is also on display in all the kind comments President Bush has made about Islam since 9/11--calling it a "religion of peace" and carefully distinguishing the spiritual aspirations of millions from the heinous acts of a few. Kengor recounts that "some conservative radio talk-show hosts began snidely referring to the 'religion of peace' when they gave updates on the latest Muslim suicide bombing"; other commentators backhandedly defend Bush by saying that, well, he has to say something like that--even though he knows it's not true--just to keep the allies on board in the War on Terror. But Kengor offers a solid argument in the president's defense: "What is perhaps most remarkable (and unrecognized) about George W. Bush is that his inclusive attitude toward Islam predates September 11. Indeed, Bush was the first president ever to mention mosques in his inaugural address. 'I was floored by that,' says professor of religion Paul C. Kemeny, an expert on civil religion. 'The fact that he included "mosque" before 9/11 is profound.'"

To examine, in this book, how President Bush "walks the walk" is to be floored, time and again. The man is a believer in meekness who knows that justice--the defense of the weak--sometimes demands acts of strength. Bush supporters will love this book; Bush opponents and undecideds will learn much from it.

* Another new Bush book is A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush (Sentinel, 306 pp., $24.95) by Ronald Kessler. The author, a former investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, provides both a straightforward political biography of Bush and a remarkable inside account of his White House. Bush's character comes into focus in telling anecdotes. At one point, Democrats are reneging on a deal with the president; an aide asks Bush to retaliate. "If I understand you correctly," Bush responds, "this is all about spite, isn't it?" The aide responds that, well, yes it is, "but it feels so good." Bush then delivers the verdict: "No, I'm not going to do the spite thing." The aide later described how the encounter ended: "I sort of meekly left the Oval Office like a lower form of humanity." The book shows Bush as fundamentally comfortable in his own skin, not a victim of unhealthy political obsessions. Kessler's quote from a 1999 Bush interview is apt: "If I don't win, so be it.... If it works, great. And I believe I can do the job. And if it doesn't work, that's just the way it goes, and I'll come back home and my wife'll love me, the dog'll love me, the cats will play like they don't, but they really will." This is the kind of attitude that wins wars, and hearts.

* How about reading a 2008 campaign book? That's what R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and Mark Davis have given us in the splendidly entertaining Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery, 231 pp., $27.95). Tyrrell's credentials as a Clintonologist are unparalleled--as editor of The American Spectator, he studied and investigated both Bill and Hillary in minute detail throughout the eight years of the Clinton presidency--and in this new volume he builds the case against Hillary with a passion reminiscent of the Churchill of The Gathering Storm.

"This is a book about an ambitious, power-hungry woman," begins the book's first paragraph, which goes on to describe Hillary as a "deep-dyed radical" reminiscent of the late Madame Mao. "I see no diabolism in Madame Hillary," writes Tyrrell, "but I do see a Coat and Tie Radical--a phantasm who takes on the shape of respectability." In her first three and a half years of dogged effort in the U.S. Senate, she has seen her stature as a Democratic-party powerhouse continue to grow steadily. Hillary is now chairman of the Democratic Steering and Coordination Committee, which the author characterizes as "one of the most powerful jobs in the Senate Democratic leadership," running "the sweet spot ... where the wish lists of big money, liberal interest groups ... get a say on the Democrats' internal policy agenda."

Tyrrell is second to none in his willingness--and his ability--to mount a scathing assault on Hillary and all her works. But he offers, as well, some wise words of caution and restraint: "Hatred is not only bad for the soul. It also clouds judgment and causes one to waste a campaign throwing useless haymakers. It is important to record Hillary's life record and share it with the receptive public. But ... it will not be good enough to beat Hillary because she deserves to lose. Her opponent will have to deserve to win." These are the words of a man who holds to higher ideals than mere victory--and therein lies much of the force of Bob Tyrrell's fine book.

* Should conservatives support "the Enlightenment project"? Nostalgists for throne and altar have always been suspicious of the Enlightenment and its legacy, and they have recently been joined in this sentiment by postmodern theorists skeptical of the claims of reason. In The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (Knopf, 284 pp., $25), Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of our leading social theorists and historians of ideas, offers a convincing defense of the enduring worth of the Enlightenment.

She carefully distinguishes the British Enlightenment--a "sociology of virtue" realized politically in the new American Republic--from the abstract and absolutist deification of capital-R Reason of the French Enlightenment. In a France characterized by religious oppression, the Enlightenment was motivated by Voltaire's spirit of "Ecrasez l'infame"; but in Britain, where religious diversity and toleration had taken much firmer hold, there was not an infame against which to revolt. Britain's enlightened spirits could therefore view men's natural religious sentiments as allies in the fight for reform, not dangerous atavisms to be stamped out as a public menace. In Himmelfarb's account, because the British Enlightenment was more modest in its aims, and more reasonable in its understanding of man--in short, because it was more humane--than the French Enlightenment, it has been more beneficial and lasting in its results. This book is a short, sensible, and highly readable defense of modernity as a conservative accomplishment.

* One of John Kerry's key selling points in this election is that he is a more respected figure than President Bush among a group smilingly called "the international community." Not to be confused with ordinary men and women in foreign countries, this "international community" is actually a congeries of statist hacks with more interest in preserving the status quo (including their own privileges) than in advancing the global public good. They have a proven record of terrible judgment when it comes to American politicians; their hero--their lionized Nobel Prize honoree--is Jimmy Carter. Those of us old enough to remember when Carter appeared to be a nice guy, a breath of fresh air in a corrupt and despondent time, would do well to read Steven F. Hayward's The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry (Regnery, 262 pp., $27.95), an admirably concise yet pointed biography covering Carter's early political strivings, his disastrous presidency, and his post-presidential meddling in world affairs. Carter's worldview has proved itself, on too many occasions, spectacularly wrong. The most famous examples--the fiasco of the hostages in Iran (1979-81), the nuclear deal with North Korea (1994)--are recounted here; so are other less well-known nuggets. "You have been so patient and wise," Carter effused to Yasser Arafat in 1993. "Regrettable," he said of United Nations efforts to capture Somalian warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid (of Black Hawk Down notoriety). To relive the Carter record in Hayward's pages is to agree with the author that America should not "go down that road again"; any foreign potentates who differ can be safely assumed not to have our best interests at heart.

* In Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 196 pp., $27.95), former deputy undersecretary of defense--and National Review Online contributor--Jed Babbin makes a dispositive case against today's U.N. and its diplomatic enablers. That the U.N. is financially corrupt is evidenced by the scams of its Oil for Food program in Iraq; but much more threatening for the world's future is the institution's moral and intellectual corruption, which, writes Babbin, cripples its response to terrorism and worldwide human-rights abuses. It has been aptly observed that the United Nations has never been a union of nations at all; it has been, rather, a union of governments, and favors governments--no matter how barbaric--over people. Babbin's powerful book amounts to a timely warning: If, owing to increased U.S. support from a Kerry administration, the U.N. gains more power, the result will be great harm "to children and other living things."

* The Triumph of Wounded Souls: Seven Holocaust Survivors' Lives (Notre Dame, 292 pp., $28), by Bernice Lerner of Boston University, is a moving story of men and women who responded to experiences of unbelievable barbarity by dedicating their lives to the pursuit of knowledge.

* The cost of an American college education continues its scandalous rise. In Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much (AEI, 259 pp., $25), economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University and the American Enterprise Institute paints a comprehensive picture of what's wrong. One problem is a lack of market discipline, which permits universities to divert a growing amount of money to programs connected only indirectly, if at all, to undergraduate education.