THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN CANDIDATE

TWO MEN WANT TO BE PRESIDENT. ONLY ONE KNOWS WHY

One of the earliest truisms in Rick Warren's runaway Christian bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life is that "It's not about you." The purpose of your life has nothing to do with you, except to the extent that it requires your cooperation to fulfill it. God has given everyone a unique set of talents and experiences and abilities, and He knows exactly what He has in mind for your destiny.

It occurred to me recently that one of the things that distinguishes the two candidates for president this year is a sense of purpose. Even before he was president, George W. Bush knew there was some reason God wanted him to be in that position. After September 11, he was virtually certain that he had been called, as many evangelists put it, "for such a time as this." His role was to bring the nation through an almost unimaginable tragedy, to steer us through the night, a steady guiding hand. He was our protector, our guard, our dependable leader for many months afterward. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, he found himself--though the moment was short lived--fulfilling his pledge to be "a uniter, not a divider."

In this run for a second term, he has not changed his conviction. He understands that he has been granted the honor of being a steward of the people and resources of the United States of America. It humbles him. It drives him to excellence. It haunts his waking dreams. George W. Bush, the man who has been so central to life in the United States for the past four years, both to those who love and to those who hate him, awaits the call of God to see what the next four years may bring.

I don't mean that he's not "political." To the contrary, God has given him a true gift for politics, especially relational, grass-roots politics. And I don't mean that he's planning to glide into office on some divine instrument, without policies or explanation or a solid case on which to make him president. He has all those things, and more. But at his core, where it really counts, George W. Bush is a man of faith, following a walk of faith, certain sometimes only that the God who put him where he is will take him where he is to go. Like Abraham (the patriarch, not Lincoln), the President acts on conviction, even when the end (or, as it is so popular to say these days, the "exit strategy") is not in sight.

Talking to Bill O'Reilly this week, the president expressed puzzlement at the idea that there are some in the nation who are disturbed by the way he shows his faith in office. He said he doesn't see how a man can separate his faith from his life, and his life happens to be the presidency. That is exactly the right answer. His current job in life, granted him by God, is to be president of the United States. Whether God retains him there is not in George's hands, but in those of God and the people. What happens next is not about him; it's about God's plan and the future of America. That's why, as commentators so often say, the president is "comfortable in his own skin." It's because he knows he doesn't even own the skin.

Faith is not a blind leap into the unknown. And it's not a privileging of emotion over reason. Faith is knowing Who is leading you, and trusting that He knows what He's doing. Faith means taking risks that might seem foolish, and sticking with the plan when things seem unclear. George W. Bush lives every day in that faith.

John Kerry, on the other hand, seems the very opposite. Of all the things we know about him, the one thing we do not know is why he wants to be president.

Because he won't tell us, both right and left are free to make up the answer that satisfies them. For the left, he wants to be president so he can wake up every day trying to make the lives of average Americans better. He wants to be president to rescue all those imperiled American soldiers being held against their will by the current president in Iraq. He wants to be president to "give back" to the nation that has been so good to him. Whatever. But none of the motivations the left imputes to the Senator have ever been stated by him.

On the other side, the right looks at Kerry and says, "Aha! He wants to be president so he can pursue the left wing agenda of his wife's foundations!" Or, perhaps he wants to be president to escape being the junior Senator from Massachusetts (it seems clear that the Senior one isn't leaving any time soon). Could he want to be president so that someday, after being president, he might have a marketable skill and an income of his own? We don't know. And he won't say.

While President Bush is driven by his faith, Kerry seems utterly disdainful of his. He claims convictions that he acts in opposition to. He chafes at the authority of the faith community he has chosen to be a part of. He denigrates those who do claim to be motivated by their faith to advance political positions. Evidently it does not motivate him.

Those who are not motivated by moral conviction often act out of economic self-interest. Yet Kerry is running for a position that pays less than a grant from his wife's foundation and entails an enormous amount of work. Though he seems to have little passion for the position, he shows no more evidence of wanting the job just for the money. After all, it's barely a step above his existing salary as a Senator.

Does he want the job because his party wants him to have it? Because the people have begged him to do it? It seems unlikely, given that the majority of Kerry-leaning voters don't like him, but dislike Bush. The race is so close now, it is impossible that he could have believed before he started that "America" wanted him--such a perception would border on the megalomaniacal.

So what is his purpose for being president? We do not know.

What is his purpose for being? That, too, we neither know nor have a sense that he does. He has ambition, yes--but it seems merely a drive to run, without a reason to win. His promise of "leadership" consists only of doing "everything" differently than the way Bush has done it--which is a silly thing to say, since there's no way he could possibly know how Bush has done "everything." No one person except President Bush knows "everything" he has done, because he has done so many things in so many different areas of effort. Of course, the Senator would have a better chance of knowing more of what the President has done if he had been present for the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings and meetings that he missed while running for President. Oh, well.

He might know a little more about Iraq had he gone there. He might have a reasonable critique if he had attended Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's speech before the Joint Session of Congress that Kerry was too busy barnstorming the battleground states to attend. He might have a better chance to be president if he spent more time examining incoming information and less time excoriating the people who are providing it and acting on it.

So, for now, John Kerry remains a man without a purpose. His mission, as he sees it, is to unseat the president.

But why?

The world may never know.