Thus speaketh the Education President.

It’s a well-known story, but lets relive it, shall we? During one of his first debates, when asked who his favorite philosopher was, George W. Bush replied — but, of course — "Jesus." The questioner, as we recalled, was visibly stunned: "Could you … well, elaborate?""Jesus!" repeated Bush with a curt nod of his head as if to give notice that he was putting a period at the end of a finished answer. Again the staggered moderator tried, "Y-yes … ?" The lips of the candidate pursed all to one side in a peevish smirk before George finally saw his way home. "Because," he said with a majestic lift of his chin, "He changed my heart!"

Awww! We still get the ole lump in throat, tear in eye, dribble of pre-come down the inseam. Many things have changed this President’s heart, and we are never so crazy in love with him as when the Great Man talks about his understanding of science. How stem cell research is really murder, and condoms are worse than AIDS, and evolution is — well, as he says with nary a blush, "the jury is still out."

His highly-credential teachers at Yale must be so proud. The Yale alumni must look at those diplomas hanging in their offices and feel so reassured that such a diploma is surely worth the paper it’s printed on.

Oh, George! Talk to us of science! Speak those sweet nothings in our ears! We sit at your feet like the little children in the Garden of Gethsemane, our faces lit with the radiant glory of your unearthly pronouncements. For surely it is the sort of crowd-pleasing science one reads in Christian best-sellers that you know best. A science of signs and wonders and dinosaurs co-existing with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Stand proud, America! More people in our Education President’s educated country believe in angels (a whopping 72%) than in evolution (a miniscule 33%). No child has been left behind ( praise!) nor Born-Again Dispansationalist either. Roma Downey, yes!; Charles Darwin, no, no, no!.

And now, at last, the President is using what the conservatives like to call his "bully pulpit" to urge that the Old Testament be taught in the public schools! As science!

Word for word, from a recent news conference, as reported in the Washington Post:

Q: I wanted to ask you about the — what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?

THE PRESIDENT: I think — as I said, harking back to my days as my governor . . . Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.

Q: Both sides should be properly taught?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people — so people can understand what the debate is about.

Q: So the answer accepts the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution?

THE PRESIDENT: I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I’m not suggesting — you’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

Naturally, the unsaved were all over our Conqueror in Chief with their unpatriotic facts and logic. Many balked at the "teach both sides of the controversy" idea. “It sounds like you’re being fair," Susan Spath, a director at the National Center for Science Education , told the New York Times, "but intelligent design is a sectarian religious viewpoint. It’s not fair to privilege one religious viewpoint by calling it the other side of evolution.”

Intelligent Design, Ms. Spath said, far from being the subject of any actual debate as the President seems to believe, is uniformly condemned in the scientific literature as no more than a stealth form of the old-timey creationism of the Scopes "Monkey Trial." The Supreme Court eventually ruled that such Biblical creationism was religion and could not be taught in the classroom. So this new creationism was scrubbed of any references to God and coated with a not very persuasive veneer of scientific mumbo-jumbo. The inference, however, was that the world came about — not by natural, observable processes — but by the supernatural intervention of an intelligent entity, whom the theory stops just short of naming, referring simply to it as "the Designer."

(We here at Nightcharm have no problems with this beguiling little notion! Having loved and bedded many a designer, we know what colossal divas they can be, not to mention control freaks.)

In a similar vein, the 43,000-member American Geophysical Union issued a strongly-worded rebuke that accused President Bush of "undermining" the understanding of science in this country. “‘Intelligent design’ is not a scientific theory at all." the statement said flatly. A sentiment echoed by stormy editorials across the nation, including this one from The Rocky Mountain News:

But among experts, there is no debate worth mentioning. The theory of evolution underpins all modern biology, and like any vibrant science it is constantly being expanded and modified as new lines of evidence appear … Intelligent design, in contrast, is taken seriously by scarcely any experts. It proposes that the natural world is too complex to have been created by entirely natural processes, so there must be a designer of some kind. As to how the designer acts, or how scientists could study those actions, it has no answers. Intelligent design explains nothing and predicts nothing; it isn’t even a theory. It has no place in science classrooms.

By nightfall even the President’s own science advisor John H. Marburger was trying to dilute the President’s remarks in a telephone interview with the New York Times. Of course, asserted Marburger, “evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology” and “intelligent design is not a scientific concept.” The correct interpretation of the President’s words , he maintained, was that the President believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the “social context” in science classes. Now we know this President believes many a strange and wonderful thing but since when is "social context" taught in high school physics?

Still we are confident that our President — who has a direct line to Jesus H. Christ Philosopher, after all — is inspired in his "teach the controversy" approach to education. But evolution isn’t the only scientific field that has engendered controvery. There are many others. May we respectfully suggest that the following changes be made to the public school curricular?:

Alongside astronomy, teach astrology. With arithmetic, a dash of numerology. When high school sophomores have to dissect embalmed frogs, teach them to read the entrails as well, for signs of impending earthquake and pregnancy. And surely some toney charter school in some leafy Republican suburb — in Annapolis, say, or Chevy Chase — could lure Professor Snape away from Hogswarts and have him teach Defense Against the Dark Arts in lieu of, oh … chemistry?

These are bold initiatives but our Education President is a man of bold, if not beatific, vision.

So Let it be Written! So Let it be Done!

Our angel on high will be familiar to members of the Inner Circle who saw him before he got his wings. You can catch more of his heavenly body in our Seattle Boys gallery:

(MEMBERS / non-MEMBERS)