IN MAKING such radical selections, Laura Bush seems to be mounting a full-fledged literary assault on almost everything that her husband’s party holds dear. To head off this charge, Bush insists: "There’s nothing political about American literature. Everyone can like American literature, no matter what your party." Such a statement is, on its face, idiotic. The strength of American literature is that it has served as one of the main venues for vital, ongoing political debate throughout our history. The great and important American writers — from Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Phillis Wheatley to Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway on up through Toni Morrison and Philip Roth — were and are political.

Laura Bush surely knows this. But like many a woman whose public and political life comes from her husband’s (or father’s) political office, she is in an impossible situation. She cannot deviate very far from the "official" party line, yet she’s expected to create a public image and mission. Literature seems like a safe idea — but only if you don’t really say much about it. To state that "American literature is not political" is a glorious lie that works for Bush perfectly. She can maintain her image as the nice librarian lady while undercutting the basic tenets of the Republican Party.

In this light, it’s worth thinking about Bush’s answer to the question of what is her favorite book. Giving "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as her answer was a brave and even dangerous move. Brave because it labeled her as an intellectual. Dangerous because it almost gave away her game. In that section of the book — it is a long fable told by cynical brother Ivan to his saintly brother Alyosha — Christ once again comes to earth during the Spanish Inquisition and is arrested for being a troublemaker and a political rabble-rouser. The Inquisitor explains that since his last appearance on earth, the Church founded by Jesus has discovered that people don’t want freedom. Rather, they want authority that will tell them what to do; in contemporary terms, they want fascism. Jesus says nothing and is sentenced to be burned alive. The Inquisitor states the fascist credo: "Oh, we shall convince them that they will only become free when they resign their freedom to us, and submit to us. The most tormenting secrets of their conscience — all, all they will bring to us, and we will decide all things, and they will joyfully believe our decision, because it will deliver them from their great care and their present terrible torments of personal and free decision."

Ivan’s original ending to the story is that Jesus is burned, but he offers an alternative — well, a kinder, gentler — ending as well. In this ending, Jesus plants a homoerotic kiss on the Grand Inquisitor’s lips and is allowed to go as long as he never returns to earth again. It’s still an ending that presumes that humankind will always be happier with fascism, but at least Jesus escapes having to die again, so the potential for mercy still exists in the world.

Clearly, Laura Bush understands full well the import of "The Grand Inquisitor." Although she gave this answer before her husband was appointed president, the moral of "The Grand Inquisitor" has more meaning and more power than ever before in our society, which is now under the stern supervision of another Grand Inquisitor, John Ashcroft. It also raises the question "What would Jesus do?" — so popular among evangelical Christians — to a new level. Dostoyevsky’s answer, of course, is that Jesus wouldn’t have a chance in hell to do anything against the exaggerated, untempered power of the Grand Inquisitor.

Before we get too excited about Laura Bush’s, um, crusade, it’s fair to point out that few Americans — much less high-ranking members of Bush’s administration — have likely read The Brothers Karamazov. But if the first lady succeeds with her project to get more people reading, or rereading, the works of Whitman, Dickinson, Faulkner — and especially Dostoyevsky’s "The Grand Inquisitor" — she may do more damage to her husband’s administration than anything tried by some mopey liberal. In this, she may prove herself to be the most subversive person in her husband’s administration — and the salvation of the rest of us.

Michael Bronski can be reached at mabronski@aol.com