Sunday, April 29, 2007
The Big Truth about Bush
Dan Radmacher
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From the RoundTable blog
Every once in awhile, someone nails a Big Truth that makes a number of things click into place. In a speech to the Brookings Institution last week, Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel nailed a very big truth, kind of a unified theory of Bush.
That truth is this: "Instead of promoting solutions to our nation's broad challenges, the Bush administration used all the levers of power to promote their party and its narrow interests."
The thing about Big Truths is how obvious they seem once they're articulated. It doesn't take astute observation to realize that Bush, who promised to be a "uniter, not a divider" -- before he morphed into "the decider" -- has been one of the most partisan presidents of recent history.
But in his speech, Emanuel paints a clear picture of how Bush "inverted the very purpose of government" and made the federal government a "stepchild of the Republican Party."
Emanuel, a White House adviser to President Clinton, acknowledged that he is no stranger to partisan politics. "I am not one who believes you can ever fully divorce politics from policy in a democracy. It would be like trying to do physics without math."
But Emanuel also knew there should be a balance, "that we should never allow the basic functions and solemn responsibilities of government to be subjugated to or take a backseat to politics or party interests."
But under Bush, all semblance of that balance has been lost. In the Bush administration, "no function of the federal government is free from the influence of politics."
The examples are legion, from the cronyism that crippled the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the political purge of U.S. attorneys that has Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in such hot water.
Throughout the federal government, appointing "loyal Bushies" has taken precedence over appointing people who know what they're doing.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq was never going to be simple or easy. But the decision to hand key positions to unqualified but politically connected individuals -- like the 24-year-old commercial real estate broker hired to manage the Iraqi stock exchange -- helped doom the undertaking.
Emanuel touched on the latest evidence that the GOP has totally hijacked the federal government: an extremely political presentation by Karl Rove's assistant to the General Services Administration highlighting 20 congressional Democrats whom Republicans want to defeat in 2008.
Lurita Doan, head of the GSA, reportedly asked the gathered employees what the mammoth federal agency could do to "help our candidates."
At a recent congressional hearing, Doan pleaded memory loss -- a frequent malady among Bush officials -- about the presentation and her subsequent remarks.
Politics, of course, is about getting power and keeping power. Governing is about using power, preferably for the common good. Past administrations have blurred the line between politics and governance. This administration has obliterated it.
Rove and Bush set out to create an era of Republican dominance, and they didn't care what ethical boundaries needed to be shattered to do it.
But, as Emanuel said, "The good news is that this pattern of putting party first and country second has been brought into the light of day and can no longer be explained away as the product of errors or lapses in judgment. The implausible excuses are piling up, the explanations becoming harder and harder to believe and the truth more difficult to obscure."
Much Bush administration malfeasance is coming to light because Democrats regained control of Congress and are exercising the oversight function ignored by Republicans.
This exposure is good for the republic, if not for the Republican Party. Though the party could still recover if it disowns Bush and Rove, and their tactics.
As dissatisfaction with Bush grows among conservatives, that may be easier to do. According to Washington Post columnist Davig Ignatius, one Republican senator he spoke with said, "This is the most incompetent White House I've seen since I came to Washington."
As Emanuel made clear in his important speech, that incompetence flows from the unprecedented influence of partisan interests in the governing of this nation.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
