Posted on 12/02/2002 2:14:48 PM PST by Leroy S. Mort
WASHINGTON (AP) - Politics and re-election concerns rule the White House at the expense of good public policy, says a former aide to President Bush.
Not so, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday, dismissing comments from John J. DiIulio as ``baseless and groundless.''
DiIulio issued two statements, the first generally standing by his criticism, the second - similar to Fleischer's comment - calling his own allegations ``groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples.''
DiIulio, a Democrat who led the White House office of faith-based initiatives until August 2001, said in an interview with Esquire magazine: ``There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: complete lack of a policy apparatus.''
``What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis,'' he was quoted as saying in the January issue. Karl Rove, DiIulio said, is ``enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political-adviser post near the Oval Office.''
Fleischer said of the Esquire article, ``Any suggestion that the White House makes decisions that are not based on sound policy reasons is baseless and groundless.''
DiIulio did not back down in the first statement he released Monday through the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches.
He did dispute two quotes, neither of which involved his assertion that re-election interests are paramount in the Bush White House. DiIulio is quoted extensively in the article, many of his comments culled from a seven-page ``manifesto'' the magazine says he prepared on politics inside the White House.
In one passage he was quoted as saying that what White House domestic policy adviser Margaret LaMontagne ``knows about domestic policy could fit in a thimble.'' DiIulio said Monday he had no recollection of making that statement but ``I humbly and sincerely apologize to her just the same.''
He also said one unspecified exchange with Rove depicted in the article ``did not occur as such.'' He was apparently referring to a passage in which he complained to Rove about the heavy presence of Christian evangelical leaders in the White House. DiIulio tells Rove in the article: ``I'm not taking any (expletive) off of Jerry Falwell.''
DiIulio's first statement Monday said the article ``is unjustly hard on Mr. Rove and over-the-top complimentary to me, thereby creating a too-pat contrast that is, I feel, MOST UNFAIR TO MR. ROVE.'' DiIulio did not say how the article was unfair. But, he said, ``I regret any and all misimpressions.''
After DiIulio's first statement, Fleischer said DiIulio had ``issued an apology.''
Shortly after the press secretary's criticism, DiIulio issued a second statement that was strikingly similar to Fleischer's comments. ``John DiIulio agrees that his criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. He sincerely apologizes and is deeply remorseful,'' a university spokeswoman said.
DiIulio declined to elaborate.
He had led a White House office promoting Bush's ``faith-based initiative,'' which stalled in Congress amid fierce debate over how religious programs can get government money without running afoul of the constitutional separation of church and state. He is a professor of politics, religion, and civil society at the University of Pennsylvania.
Democrats leveled similar charges against the Bush White House in the Democratic Leadership Council's magazine, ``Blueprint.'' The magazine says, ``The hyperpolitical nature of the Bush White House, which will leave no wire unpulled in its efforts to get the president re-elected in 2004, indicates that Republicans acknowledge their political vulnerability even in the wake of the successful midterm elections.''
Dilulio Denies He Was Forced Out; Supporters Bemoan Loss
By REBECCA CARR / Cox Washington Bureau
08-18-01
WASHINGTON--As the White House searches to replace John J. DiIulio Jr., head of the White House Office on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, senior aides to the president are disputing rumors that he was forced out.
"Absolutely not true," said Karl Rove, senior advisor to President Bush in response to rumors that he and the former University of Pennsylvania professor sparred over how to proceed with the president's "faith-based initiative."
"He is responsible for the success of the president's faith-based initiative more than any other individual outside of the president," Rove said. "He has been an unbelievably effective leader for the president. He has done a magnificent job under some real difficult circumstances."
DiIulio said he was equally upset about speculation suggesting that friction with Rove was behind his leaving.
"I never felt like I was forced out," DiIulio said. "I felt badly that they were pitting Karl against me in this rumor mill."
"It's trite and easy to say, 'Here is the slightly befuddled, ineffective, but honest academic, who came to Washington like Mr. Smith and has fallen afoul of the Machiavelli,"' DiIulio said. "There is one problem: it isn't true."
DiIulio did have difficulty on several issues with Don Eberly, a religious conservative who already had the deputy job in the faith-based office when DiIulio arrived.
DiIulio wanted to build bipartisan support for the legislation rather than ramrod it through the House. But others at the White House wanted to push it through the House as quickly as possible.
But DiIulio says he is leaving to spend more time with his family and because he feels he has successfully launched the president's initiative to give religious groups greater access to federal money to deliver social services to the poor.
Legislation has passed the House, a report detailing barriers that religious groups face when applying for federal money has been released and an organization to generate public-private partnerships is working in tandem with his office.
DiIulio said that his choice for his successor would be John Bridgeland, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. But Rove said that no decision had been made.
But Dilulio's departure comes at a pivotal moment for the president's initiative. There is concern that the initiative will sputter without DiIulio's connections to Democrats and religious organizations across the country.
Key supporters of the initiative are also concerned that minority churches in poor parts of cities will be forgotten.
"John J. DiIulio has been the most important policy intellectual and force for any possibility that the Bush administration had to promote racial reconciliation in this country," said the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, who has worked with DiIulio for the last six years to develop a faith-based model in Boston.
Rivers thinks that DiIulio was not given enough support by the White House to accomplish his goal of opening up funding to churches without requiring them to forfeit their spiritual character.
"The White House's failure to support John J. DiIulio essentially says to the black, the brown of the inner cities to go to Hell," Rivers said. "There is no faith-based initiative without John DiIulio."
The Rev. Luis A. Cortes Jr., president of Nueva Esperanza, a faith-based nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia, said that DiIulio was disappointed with the process, but it had nothing to do with the Bush White House.
Rather, DiIulio was disappointed in the heated opposition from both conservative and liberal groups, Cortes said.
"He is a social scientist who thought that the faith-based initiative was a no-brainer," Cortes said. DiIulio saw that in some poor neighborhoods, the churches were the only institutions left to help people with hunger, shelter and clothing, he said. If those religious groups could receive more money, then they could have a major impact on lifting people out of poverty, he said.
Others were optimistic that the legislation would move forward in the Senate.
Bishop Harold Calvin Ray, senior pastor at the Redemptive Life Fellowship Church in West Palm Beach, said DiIulio's efforts would pay off in the Senate.
"John was a personal friend and we feel he has done a superlative job of paving the way for the faith-based efforts on the national level," Ray said. "Due to his diligent hard work the faith-based initiative has seen great initial success and will now move forward in the Senate."
Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) and House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts praised DiIulio Friday, saying he would be a loss to the White House.
"Dr. DiIulio's resignation is a loss to the cause," Hall said. "He was a great partner."
Hall said he hoped that DiIulio's successor would be "as balanced and fair" as DiIulio has been.
But the legislation has yet to even attract a Democratic sponsor in the Senate. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) is considered the likely sponsor, but he has expressed reservations about the legislation passed by the House.
Before announcing his resignation, DiIulio told both Lieberman and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), the GOP point person on the bill.
Lieberman, in a statement Friday, expressed sorrow at DiIulio's departure.
"(DiIulio) leaves having done a remarkable job in advancing this critically important cause in a short time," Lieberman said.
Lieberman said he looked forward to working with DiIulio's successor.
"I look forward to working with John's successor and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to finish the job John so ably started," Lieberman said. "I am confident that if we work together we can pass a constructive, inclusive, and constitutional bill."
No Leroy, this guy is in the right church, just the wrong pew.
Good national policy is indeed being neglected.
However, it is being sacrificed to Wall Street, not politics and re-election.
Puppet Bush is fully committed to eradicating our borders and serving only one Constitutional term.
God spare us from what he may have planned after that.
LOL... But never forget he's only trying to fulfill the dream of President Reagan to eliminate all borders so that people of the earth can move freely about as they desire. After all it's a one world government that is being put in place or so it's said by some on this forum...
We've gone from a dope smokin' globo-neo-commie rapist in the White House to a smirking Ivy League fratboy prankster who didn't sober up until he was 40.
A truely sorry state of affairs indeed.
Mr. Rove plays a most important role, getting Republicans elected, in "the political process”, so Democrats do not get the opportunity to appoint and approve their version of federal judges.
This nation has a form of government based on public servants. We select the servants to do our governing for us. Like all hired servants they do what the bosses tell them to do. The Bosses are the voters.
Over and over you trash the servants for failing to do what you want done. You have yet to figure out that the only way to get things done is to get the bosses, that is a majority of American voters, behind what you want to do. To change much of anything you have to get about 70 percent support.
You stand around cursing the servants because they insist on doing what their masters want done and refusing to do what their masters don't want done.
When the masters tell the public servants to do it .. they will.
All your life you have been looking for a principled leader to do what you feel is right in spite of public opinion. Few servants have a death wish Willie. They are all afraid of the boss. They pretend they are leaders... Willie, but all know they are just servants.
This guy was in charge of the Faith-Based Program and he was COMPLAINING about the evangelicals being too much in the White House???? Hello!!! Earth to Democrat Delio....That's who's going to do the work!! Idiot.
Ahh, and there are fairies in the bottom of my garden also.
Since when have we been the boss - since when have they done what we wanted (take immigration), and since when have we had a real choice. IN the last election - we had no choice - we had two rich, priviledged sons come out of the gate with so much influence and money they rolled over anyone in their paths. We had no choice - Bush was the only thing we could do - it wasn't a choice - it was a fervent plea to the Gods that what he wanted and what was best for the country would sometimes be the same.
It has been a long time since the bosses in Washington cared what we thought. That is a myth that needs to be dispelled.
This country needs to grow up and stop depending on our 'public servants' and make them as irrelevant as possible. Instead we continue to give them more and more power and adulation - no wonder we are going down the tubes.
Horse-dung Tator.
Our choices are limited to a predetermined selection of puppets.
We the People are forced to hold our noses an cast our votes for whomever we think is the lesser of two evils.
Not in my precinct, and I doubt that's true in yours, either. That's especially true in the primaries.
Your problem is that you don't like the candidates that appeal to the majority of voters. No wonder you're so disaffected.
Dubya's Michigan campaign co-chair, Candy Miller, corruptly abused her power as Michigan Secretary of State to keep my candidate off the ballot.
Even so, there are no shortages of candidates on the ballots. Even the Greens are on the ballot in Texas, and normally we shoot those fellers on sight.
Despite subsequent court decisions, it was a clear conflict of interest.
But that's beside the point.
Our nation is in deep doo-doo when only pathetic incompetents get elected to the highest office in the land.
It could be worse. You could be in charge of something.
That's supposed to be a defense of Dubya's scandalous obliteration of our borders?
Lame.
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