If you doubted that Gov. Andy Beshear is running for president, read his book.
“Go and Do Likewise,” published Sept. 22, draws its title from the last line of the Good Samaritan story Jesus told. The book shows that Beshear’s chosen lane to the Democratic nomination is through Democrats who think the president should be “morally straight,” as the Boy Scout Oath puts it – not necessarily on the same page with them with religion or even faith, but “treating all people as people of God, not dividing the country by race, party, ethnicity or even sexual orientation,” as the book’s back-cover blurb puts it.
The back cover mentions Donald Trump, who appears in the second paragraph of the text. And the sixth. And the seventh, eighth and 10th. Aiming at a national audience, Beshear’s political autobiography refers to his past major adversary, Republican governor Matt Bevin, mainly as “Trump Lite.”
Democrats want someone who stands up to Trump and Trumpism. The book seems aimed at the major rap against Beshear, that he is too “Mr. Rogers,” the nickname that his staff gave him for the public persona that made him the nation’s most popular Democratic governor – in a state that Trump won by 30 points.
That record gave Beshear his first traction for 2028. So did his identity as a Southern moderate, somewhat in the mold of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. But as governor of a small state that has relatively little money, he needs good media attention.
Hence the book, and a month-long book tour. But he says he didn’t write it because he wants to be president!
Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins if there was any Democrat he wouldn’t run against, Beshear said, “Well, I haven’t made any decision on that, but I will say, I didn’t write this book for anything in the future. I wrote this book because I was tired of people hijacking faith to hurt people instead of to help people.”
On that we can give Beshear the benefit of the doubt, but his tour is clearly aimed at the 2028 nomination.
It has included Washington, D.C., with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore; Philadelphia, with centrist questioner Michael Smerconish; New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Michigan, with their Democratic governors; and South Carolina, which Beshear supported making first in the party’s primary calendar.
Republicans are pushing back. Kentucky GOP operative Jake Cox said on Facebook after one of Beshear’s TV interviews, “The dude literally used Jesus to attack Republicans for not agreeing with his political philosophy.”
In the book, Beshear addresses Trump supporters who say they follow Jesus’s example: “I have no doubt that the vast majority are sincere. And yet their support of Trump reflects a misunderstanding of Jesus’s teachings,” which he says Christ boiled down to “Love God with everything inside of you and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Each chapter of the book starts with a Bible verse, and most are sprinkled with Scripture, including Old Testament maxims. But this is not an evangelical tract; it’s a case for a moral center in politics.
“It is unthinkable that we as a country and the Democratic Party in particular have all but ceded faith and basic morality to a modern-day Pharisee,” writes Beshear, a Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) deacon.
Beshear writes, “I’m not trying to bring about some sort of Christian nation. Instead, I’m trying to live like Jesus in this nation, which is made up of people from every corner of the world.”
The book’s subtitle is “How we heal a broken country.” On CNN Sunday, Jake Tapper asked Beshear if he would be willing, as part of that healing, to forgive Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Beshear didn’t answer directly, but said they should be held accountable in elections, and said that he doesn’t “say ‘MAGA Republicans’ or
“MAGA voters.’ Why? Because I do believe in that reconciliation.”
On trans girls in sports, Beshear said “Sports need to be fair and there should be no unfair advantage.” At the same time, “We don’t throw anybody under the bus.”
As usual for a campaign book, the 233 pages are short on current issues. A segment about Louisville’s mass shooting makes no mention of gun control. On climate change, he tips his hat to coal’s role in creating the country’s economic might, and says “The push for environmental justice came about a decade before any thoughts of economic justice” for coal communities, a Democratic slip-up that he says turned the state’s two coalfields red.
“The Left has been guilty far too many times of acting like they know what’s best for people and imposing ‘solutions’ without ever asking those our policies will impact if this is what they need or want,” he writes, implicitly seeking the label of moderate.
Details to come.