Bono's Calling

"The bottom line is, I believed he was sincere and made good arguments," says John Kasich, the former Republican congressman from Ohio, who heard the pitch and led the House to appropriate $435 million toward a $5 billion to $6 billion loan-forgiveness program for 33 African nations. "I know he is a man of faith and he stressed responsibility on our part, and that resonated with me.

"And," says Kasich, "I like him because he's a cool guy."

He and others describe something that sounds like giddiness from having worked with someone who's not like a rock star, but actually is a rock star. When Bono was telling me about the latest IMF reports . . .

"I think knowing the Scriptures helped," Bono says of his conversations with more conservative legislators. His father was Roman Catholic, and it was his Protestant mother who regularly took him to church before her death when Bono was 14. "I think I could debate with them. I hope they had appreciated that, and they knew I had respect for their beliefs. Even if I wasn't the best example of how to live your life, they treated me with respect. I'm nervous of zealotism, even though I have to admit I'm a zealot for these issues of extreme poverty."

Bono seems to provide for many in official Washington a form of inspiration, reaching into those corners of the soul to find whatever remained of the sense of optimism and altruism that drove them into public service in the first place. What Bono demands in return is the means to save the lives of millions.

"Why are people listening?" Bono says. "Because I actually believe in America and they know it and I'm not sure if they do sometimes. It is a little odd and eerie to have an Irish rock star recite the Declaration of Independence like it's a great poem, but it is a great poem. And that poetry is what's missing from political dialogue right now. And this country is parched, parched from the lack of such political lyrics, and I'm going in saying, 'This is who you are.' "

Becoming Bono

He was an ordinary man once, with an ordinary name. Paul David Hewson started to become who he is at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin. There, when he was 15, he met Alison Stewart, now his wife of 25 years and the mother of his four children. And it was there he found his mates -- the three men who would join together and stand together to this day as U2.

From the very beginning, they were not content to stay a garage band or merely a darling of the critics. They always wanted to be galvanizing, a force that could reach millions, everlasting and indestructible. Musically, their songs (beginning with their first album, "Boy") made that extended reach, informed by a sense of spiritual longing, underpinned by biblical beliefs.

Reflecting on those early days, Bono reaches for the wonkish language of official Washington and says: "We decriminalized ambition. There was a kind of dishonesty that surrounded music when U2 was formed -- it was that whole thing that you had to cut your ear off to be a real artist. It was clear to us that it wasn't true. Lifestyle did not decide how good an artist you were.

"It's that part of you that stands in front of a mirror [strumming] with a tennis racquet," he continues. "You want to be in the Beatles with girls chasing you down the street. I don't really believe there's a songwriter out there who doesn't want as many people as possible to hear their songs. And when they say that, I don't believe them."

And millions across the world heard U2's anthems to social justice in 1985 at the Live Aid benefit for a starving Ethiopia. After that, Bono and Alison went there themselves and worked for six weeks giving out essential food supplies. At one point, a man approached Bono with his young child, asking the rocker to take his son to Ireland.

Those who know Bono say it was something he never really got over. It spurred his transcendence from mere rock star to savior of both the world's most impoverished and the button-down servants of the American experiment working along the Potomac.