One more item for the "A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing" file. Fulfilling his promise to explain his proposals for a "new partnership" between government and faith-based organizations, Al Gore gave an interview on religion to seven reporters on May 29. Of course, the interview lasted only 45 minutes, but that was enough time for the vice president to offer such mots as "Faith is at the center of my life; I don't wear it on my sleeve." It was also enough time -- according to the New York Times account by the excellent religion reporter Peter Steinfels -- for Gore to race through an impressive list of impressive thinkers who, the vice president explained, had influenced his thinking on religion.
There was a glance at Reinhold Niebuhr, a nod toward Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a gesture toward Edmund Husserl, and a bow to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty? Could our well-read would-be president simply be rattling off a dimly remembered reading list from fresh-man year at Harvard? The French philosopher in question was the author of the 1946 Humanism and Terror, the book that tried to answer Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon by defining Stalin's murderous Moscow show trials as true humanism, rightly understood. But President Clinton, you'll recall, has claimed an affinity with Darkness at Noon. He compared himself, during the impeachment trial, to Koestler's wrongly accused hero, Rubashov. So perhaps all Gore is doing with his citation of Merleau-Ponty is finding yet another way to distance himself from the troubles of that man in the White House.