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KICKED OUT OF THE PRESIDENT’S FAN CLUB

He was so close to the president that people almost thought he was a clone. Well, maybe not. Short, wiry, Greek-swarthy George Stephanopoulos was about a foot shorter than Clinton and a hundred pounds lighter. But he thought like Bill Clinton, shared the same politics as Bill Clinton, the same ambitious agenda as Bill Clinton. Staffers and lobbyists and congressional aides knew that if they wanted to find out what the president was thinking, they could just call up George.

In his memoirs, All Too Human, Stephanopoulos describes how, back in 1991, he got linked up with the Governor from Arkansas. At first he was just a hired gun, a paid professional political operative. But as he watched Clinton campaign, watched him connect with poor people, watched him “work a room” for votes, he found himself getting converted.

“How it happened is still a mystery to me,” he writes, “but I was on the road to becoming a true believer, developing an apostle’s love for Clinton and the adventure we were about to share.”

And then, for several hundred pages, he describes what it was like to SERVE the president. What was it like to be in the White House, to have an office right next to the OVAL Office?

“I didn’t have time to be lonely,” he admits, “with work consuming twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, six days a week, and several hours on Sunday. Every day was a dozen meetings, a hundred phone calls, a new crisis.”

And through it all, he got ever and ever closer to the brain of Bill Clinton. He was the chief executive’s alter ego; he knew the man’s rhythms, his idiosyncracies. He could withstand Clinton’s famous purple rages, his tantrums, and still come up ticking.

Well, but after the 1996 elections, Stephanopoulos had to get out. He was just too tired, too exhausted, too burned out. He was seeing a therapist, trying to get his life back under control. And the only way to regain his sanity was to escape the White House. We began seeing him, along with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, on ABC’s Sunday morning political talk show. He was a guest lecturer at Columbia; he began to work on his book. But he still enjoyed dropping in at the White House and gossiping with Paul Begala, Rahm Emanuel, and James Carville.

And then . . . Monica Lewinsky. In his heart of hearts, Stephanopoulos knew Clinton was guilty. He knew he was lying. As much as he wanted to be loyal, to be a defender, it would be dishonest of him. Plus, he was now an employee of ABC and Newsweek. They weren’t paying him to be loyal; they were paying him to tell the truth, to report the facts, to be objective. And so, when his fellow journalists asked him his opinion, he told them. He admitted his deep doubts. He was even willing to use the “I” word — impeachment.

Which takes us to our topic for the week: NOWHERE MAN. George’s old friends in the inner circle of the White House were screaming at him to cut them some slack, to stick up for his former boss. “Clinton MADE you,” they raged. “Talk about betrayal!” They were calling on him to rally around the flag once more, and he wasn’t with them. Here’s how he describes it in the book:

“I wasn’t there to answer the call. I refused to vouch for Clinton’s credibility, and I couldn’t buy the party line that this was more about Clinton’s accusers than his own actions — which meant I was the enemy now. That’s the way it was with the Clintons: You were either for them or against them. I knew what being under siege was like, so I couldn’t entirely blame them for feeling that way.”

Well, revenge was quick in coming. Here’s the rest of the story:
“But the first signs of my ostracism were disconcerting and painful. In early February, [1998], on the eve of a White House party to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Clinton’s economic speech, I received a flurry of phone calls from Paul and Rahm to make sure I didn’t accept the invitation MISTAKENLY sent by the social office. They didn’t want to risk a scene. I heard that as far as Clinton was concerned, I was now a NONPERSON — my NAME was not to be mentioned in his presence.”

That must be a tough reality: to know that the President of the United States of America has said to his advisors: “I don’t ever want to hear the name George Stephanopoulos again. That guy is NOT . . . a person. He doesn’t exist. I don’t want to see PICTURES of him; I don’t want to get phone calls from him; if he’s on TV, you change the channel, and you change it, like, right now. George Stephanopoulos is gone, persona non grata, a non-person.” And this is the PRESIDENT wiping you off the map. THAT is scary.

And friend, I don’t tell this story to pick on Mr. Clinton. This kind of human ERASING has been going on among kings and presidents for all time. “Take that guy off the list” has always been a White House weapon. “Cut him off — no more access” has been a revenge tool against pushy journalists ever since the invention of the printing press; that’s not something Bill and Hillary thought up.

We want to think this week about the Nowhere Man. And the Nowhere Woman. The Nowhere Kid. Hurting people whose lives have been stripped of identity. Either because they were born into insignificance, or because they stepped into the propeller blades of some powerful person’s rage, they’ve been told for a long time: “You’re nobody. Nada. You count for zip around here.”

There’s a poignant verse found in the Old Testament, written by the prophet Isaiah. Here’s his metaphorical question:

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?”

And we all know that the answer is yes. Can a mother leave her child on the doorstep of a church? Yes. Can a mother abandon her child while she smokes crack cocaine? Yes. Can a girl and her prom night boyfriend deliver a baby between dances, toss its lifeless body in a trash dumpster, and return to the party? Yes. All around this world there are kids — or grownups who once were kids — who have to say: “Mom considered me to be nothing. I was expendable. I was not worth keeping. Mom wanted cable TV and a new Range Rover but she didn’t want ME.”

Friend, maybe that’s been you. We get an awful lot of mail here at The Voice of Prophecy from people on the “Nowhere Man” end of the spectrum. Notes come in from someone who admits in a painful, pencil scrawl: “I’m nobody. Everybody tells me so.”

We got one just last week . . . and this is word-for-word. I’m not concocting one syllable of this.

“I can’t give very much. I have not been successful in my life. I just do odd jobs here and there. My whole life has been failure, sickness, pain, and rejection. I have a hard time being around people for too long. My nerves can’t handle it. I am 59 years old and still living with my mother. Because of what happened in the past I live in fear, anger, bitterness and bad thoughts.”

So George Stephanopoulos isn’t the only person to have it drummed into their brain: “You’re nothing. You’re off the map.” This letter-writer looks around at the successes of others, the happy marriages of others, the camaraderie being enjoyed by others. And everywhere they turn, every party they look at — from the other side of the fence — they see a big fat ZERO staring at them. “Go away. You’re not a person. We don’t want you in our living room.” Even MOM is just putting up with this 59-year-old Nowhere Man.

Well, friend, maybe that’s you, and maybe not. But I want to share some news with you which isn’t metaphor, and isn’t just Bible rhyme . . . but something which is real. Here’s that same Bible passage, but this time I will do you the courtesy of reading the entire verse, and not cutting off halfway through. Isaiah 49:15, 16:

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she MAY forget, I will NOT forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands; your walls are ever before Me.”

And I know the temptation. We write this off because it’s God. People down here are real; their putdowns and rejection letters reverberate in our hearts. And God seems unreal by comparison. He’s invisible, first of all, and just TOO high up. We can’t relate to it, or take it seriously.

But friend, this is the challenge. The President of the United States is a real person; if he cuts you off, or draws you in, those actions are real. However, if you even BELIEVE in God, then you’ve GOT to accept it as truth if He says to you: “I DO know you. I DO love you. I DO remember you.”

I like how the Clear Word Bible paraphrase by Jack Blanco interprets that last line in Isaiah’s promise:

“You are always in My thoughts,” God says. “How can I forget you?”

If the Bible is true AT ALL, then you are NOT a Nowhere Person. AT THIS VERY MOMENT, you have an identity with God. He knows your name and number. He knows every single thing about you, and loves you with an indescribable intensity.

With that in mind, does it really matter if some “suit” in the Oval Office tries to cut you off?