SPINNING RACE

NEWSWEEK
MSNBC.com
By Howard Fineman and Tamara Lipper
January 27, 2003
Jan. 27 issue

He speechified to the right. He briefed to the middle. And he sought cover by trying to bring in Condi Rice. The color of racial politics

No one in Washington can be as ominously sympathetic as Dick Cheney. He was that way last week, when he placed a call to Theodore Olson, solicitor general. President George W. Bush was preparing to take a politically explosive step, filing friend of the court briefs opposing the University of Michigan’s use of racial preferences in admissions.

IT WAS IMPORTANT that the “rollout” of the briefs be as careful—as Escher-like in its eye-of-the-beholder balance—as the briefs themselves. And Olson was a problem.

Here was a conservative purist, to whom preferences of any kind were abhorrent and who wanted to advise the Supreme Court to reverse the landmark Bakke case of 1978, which held that race can be “a factor” in college admissions. But Bush had decided to move surgically, making only a relatively narrow (though still potentially far-reaching) attack on the U of M procedures. Olson’s shop could draft the briefs, but final decisions would rest with the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales. Olson was furious: it was a slap at the powers of the SG (who would normally run the show) and, in his view, a cave-in. “If you want to be SG, that’s fine!” he barked at Gonzales. Indeed, NEWSWEEK learned, Olson even considered quitting.

Olson on a rampage could hurt the administration—big time—with its conservative base. So Cheney made his call. He told Olson that he was sympathetic to his position, but that wasn’t what The Boss wanted to say. Time to get onboard. Cheney didn’t have to add—but Olson apparently understood—the rest of the message: shut up. The SG did so, signing the brief but otherwise staying out of sight while other hard-core conservatives were in full cry. (A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.)

'We Stand with Africa' - Bush

"Government ought to have a policy that helps people with a downpayment." - George W. Bush

Bush to Propose $500M AIDS Funding

Bush pushes minority homeownership

A Home Of Your Own: Expanding Opportunities for All Americans

Bush Touts Low - Income Homes Plan

U.S. Prepares 'Big-Time' Response To Famine - Impact of African crisis could be felt at White House

Bush to Propose Another $100 Million Over Five Years for Education in Africa

President Highlights Compassionate Conservative Agenda for Inner Cities

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:

"With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
Thomas Jefferson

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions."
James Madison, "Letter to Edmund Pendleton," -- James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

Source

George W. - Master of Disguise

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.