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Bush's ideological facade hides political goal
Alameda Times-Star ^ | June 15, 2003 - 5:06:22 PM PST | Neal Gabler

Posted on 06/15/2003 8:36:50 PM PDT by IoCaster

Bush's ideological facade hides political goal

Sunday, June 15, 2003 - EVERY PRESIDENT for nearly a century has had political operatives in the White House to advise him on how his decisions would play with the public and tell him what the ramifications of policy would be on his re-election prospects. But few Americans are cynical enough to believe that this political gamesmanship is anything other than a means to an end, the end being to effectuate policy. Teddy Roosevelt had trusts to bust and Manifest Destiny to fulfill; FDR a Depression to tame; Richard Nixon a detente to achieve; Ronald Reagan a government to shrink and a Cold War to win; Bill Clinton social programs to save from the conservative hatchet.

And so it has always been -- until now. From the moment of his disputed election in 2000, President Bush has been dramatically reversing the traditional relationship between politics and policy. In his administration, politics seem less a means to policy than policy is a means to politics. Its goal is not to further the conservative revolution as advertised. The presidency's real goal is to disable the Democratic opposition, once and for all.

This has become a presidential mission partly by default. Bush came to the presidency with no commanding ideology, no grand crusade. He was in league with conservatives, but he was no fire-breather. For him, conservatism seemed a convenience -- the path to the GOP nomination. One is hard-pressed to think of a position Bush took during the 2000 campaign, save for his tax cuts, much less a full program.

As is typical with strategists, Karl Rove, Bush's political Svengali, isn't much of an ideologue either. According to Nicholas Lemann's recent profile of him in the New Yorker, as Rove moved up the ladder of Texas GOP politics, he seemed more interested in advancing his career than promoting policy. Rove is an operator. His job is to win elections and build unassailable coalitions so that he doesn't have to worry about winning future elections. The philosophical stuff matters only insofar as he can parlay it into political advantage. As he told Lemann, "I think we're at a point where the two major parties have sort of exhausted their governing agendas." In Rove's view, that means devising some new agenda that will attract votes.

The difference between Rove and former political operatives like Michael Deaver in the Reagan administration and Dick Morris in Clinton's is that he doesn't just advise on the political consequences of policy; he seems to be involved in crafting policy, making him arguably the single most important adviser in the White House. Rove's hand and guiding spirit are everywhere. As John DiIulio, who briefly headed Bush's faith-based initiative, put it in an interview, everything in this administration is political, by which he meant that everything is the product of political calculation and everything is devised specifically for political advantage.

Every administration tilts decisions to reward friends and hurt enemies, though none since the days of Warren G. Harding has been as zealous in delivering largess to supporters and none since Nixon has seemed so ruthless in meting out punishments as this one. (Coming under intense administration criticism for his remarks, DiIulio apologized and expressed deep remorse for his "groundless" charges.)

Still, Rove has had something more up his sleeve than lining up support for his master's re-election. Rove's genius -- and the true genius of this administration -- is that he recognizes that political machinations don't have to be ancillary to policy. If Rove's mission is to ensure Bush's re-election and the formation of a GOP electoral monolith, he wants to devise policies that not only appeal to the party's core voters. They should also disable the Democratic Party from contesting elections. This is government expressly designed for its own self-perpetuation -- government designed to undermine the political process.

Rove's template for his new idea of governance is "tort reform" -- enacting laws that will reduce jury awards for various malfeasances, from product liability to medical malpractice. According to Lemann, this was Rove's earliest legislative crusade in Texas. To this day, Republicans insist that businesses have been unfairly burdened by excessive jury awards, but the political reason this has become a fervent GOP cause is that trial lawyers contribute heavily to the Democratic Party. Choke off their income and you choke off a major source of Democratic money.

Similarly, the president's huge tax cuts have been touted both as an economic stimulus and a way to shrink the federal government by denying it future revenues. The latter goal was also Reagan's when he pushed tax cuts more than 20 years ago. Reagan genuinely believed that government was bad. It was a central tenet of his ideology. But for this nonideological administration, there's an overriding political reason to scale back government: Federal workers and employee unions are among the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party. Forget the economy. Tax cuts hit the Democrats where it hurts: right in the wallet.

The list goes on. Bush's flirtation with school vouchers is called a way to improve education, but vouchers also would politically disempower teachers unions, another source of Democratic funding and support. The regulations issued last week by the Federal Communications Commission, allowing media conglomerates to own more TV stations, are said to foster competition. But they are also a means to empower conservative voices like that of Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News often seems like an adjunct of the White House. The faith-based initiative -- moving social services from government and community organizations to religious ones -- is portrayed as a way to make delivery of services more efficient. Politically, it would undermine more liberal-oriented community institutions and advocates that aid Democrats.

This turn of policy into politics is no less applicable to foreign affairs. The administration claimed the Iraq war was fought to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction and to prevent the Iraqi dictator from aiding terrorists. But as a political matter, the war struck the Democratic Party at one of its vulnerabilities: the idea that they're weak on defense.

Thirty years ago, Nixon pursued the same goal, but deployed covert KGB methods in the belief that overtly attacking the basis of the political system was likely to bring opprobrium. Rove can operate in broad daylight partly because what he is doing is perfectly legal, partly because his plan is so bold that he realizes no one in the media is likely to call him on it, and partly because demonizing and destroying Democrats is now a tenet of the party he guides. It has been said of Bush that he intends to finish the Reagan revolution by embedding conservatism so deeply into the governmental fabric that it will take generations to undo it. What he is really finishing, though, is not the Reagan revolution but the Clinton wars, which had far less to do with ideology than with politics. As Rove has engineered it, this is about power, pure and simple. It is about guaranteeing electoral results.

That is why, one suspects, Bush elicits such deep antagonism from the left -- deeper perhaps than any political figure since Nixon, even though he is personally genial and charming. At some level, liberals know what the president and Rove are up to and fear that they will succeed in dismantling an effective two-party system. The left knows that Rove and company aren't keen on debating issues, negotiating, compromising and horse-trading, the usual means of getting things done politically. On the contrary: The administration is intent on foreclosing them.

As much as liberals abhor the conservative agenda, there is something far more frightening to them now -- not that Republicans have an ideological grand plan but that they don't have one. Instead, the GOP plan is policy solely in the service of politics, which should terrify all Democrats.


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bush43
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1 posted on 06/15/2003 8:36:50 PM PDT by IoCaster
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: IoCaster
Tripe. Drivel.
3 posted on 06/15/2003 8:45:02 PM PDT by Fracas
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To: IoCaster
Pretty funny stuff.

Not factually true, but funny and amusing.

4 posted on 06/15/2003 8:46:26 PM PDT by Sonny M ("oderint dum metuant")
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To: IoCaster
There are so many things I want to say about this piece of trash.......but I will limit myself to YES RATS, BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!!!
5 posted on 06/15/2003 8:49:07 PM PDT by Elkiejg
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To: IoCaster

6 posted on 06/15/2003 8:49:20 PM PDT by dighton
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To: Sonny M
I believe this guy appears in that Fox News Watch show on FNC. I thought it was a bit paranoid, but amusing.
7 posted on 06/15/2003 8:50:51 PM PDT by IoCaster
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To: IoCaster
Funny, Bush has done more to cut the legs off of the UN and world governance than any other President and none of this is popular with the average voter. Most people ignorantly support things like Kyoto and World Courts, but Bush couragously killed both of these despite the politics. To think Bush is more political than say Clinton is ridiculous. Clinton ran every idea through a focus group to see how it would play politically.
8 posted on 06/15/2003 8:53:30 PM PDT by Always Right
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To: IoCaster
none since Nixon has seemed so ruthless in meting out punishments as this one.

So I guess it doesn't count when Clinton sicced the IRS against so many of his opponents. What a bunch of histrionics!! So W doesn't care at all about tort reform, school vouchers, foreign policy, or any other item, except how it can hurt Dems!! Nice cynical attitude, bud. That is exactly what Clinton did. He had one major goal, and that was to get re-elected. That is why he finally signed welfare reform. And that is why he has no real legacy except that he was the only two-term Dem Pres in a long time. That is his only legacy, besides the stained dress and the rest of the corruption.

It is so funny to see how hysterical these Dems are getting when they are actually contemplating that their party is falling apart. I only wish that it was a real possibility. Like Rush says, Libs are the funniest when they are out of power, and get nutso.

9 posted on 06/15/2003 8:58:25 PM PDT by DeweyCA
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To: IoCaster
RE #1

This article only reveals that Democrats fear a possible pargadigm shift which will leave them out in the cold for decades, just as Republicans had been for 4 decades. Now they call it a dismantling of the two-party system. It is actually the dismantling of the New Left.

The New Left figure that the "washed-up and impotent" Republicans lie on the ground and keep taking their hits. They can't imagine the Pubbies would bite back.

I can't imagine their hyperbole if Republicans dismantle the two-party system for real.

10 posted on 06/15/2003 9:00:14 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: IoCaster
It's just like democrats to think it's all about them...
11 posted on 06/15/2003 9:01:14 PM PDT by Vortex
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To: IoCaster
Boy I sure hope this guy is right.
12 posted on 06/15/2003 9:03:39 PM PDT by TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig (Soccer Mom's flee the Rats for Bush in his flight suit: I call this the Moisture Factor. MF high!)
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To: IoCaster

BARF ALERT???


13 posted on 06/15/2003 9:04:04 PM PDT by Capitalist Eric
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To: IoCaster
I agree with much of this. What I'm seeing is a superficiality of goals equal to that of winning a high school football game, with no other depth of purpose. This is the shallowest administration in 40 years until one goes back to the JFK period, which was approximately equal.
14 posted on 06/15/2003 9:07:31 PM PDT by RLK
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To: big ern
Boy I sure hope this guy is right.

Here I am thinking, "Damn, they're even better than I thought!"

15 posted on 06/15/2003 9:09:46 PM PDT by Dianna (space for rent)
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To: RLK
"I agree with much of this."

Why wouldn't you...it's written by a leftist.

16 posted on 06/15/2003 9:10:06 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez (Cuba serĂ¡ libre...soon.)
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To: IoCaster
Bush came to the White House with some very well defined ideas and most were solidly conservative (not foreign policy)- even more so than his father!
17 posted on 06/15/2003 9:11:32 PM PDT by Burkeman1
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Comment #18 Removed by Moderator

To: IoCaster
Somebody's scared of tort reform because it might slightly defund the radical left.
19 posted on 06/15/2003 9:12:24 PM PDT by RAT Patrol (Congress can give one American a dollar only by first taking it away from another American. -W.W.)
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To: IoCaster
Every administration tilts decisions to reward friends and hurt enemies, though none since the days of Warren G. Harding has been as zealous in delivering largess to supporters and none since Nixon has seemed so ruthless in meting out punishments as this one.

LOL. Sure Vince's widow agrees. I guess this guy did a Rip Van Winkle thing during the Clinotn years.

He still does carry the "no gravitas" torch by informing us know that Carl is running the country. To accuse that our politics are not based on principals but on getting the donors is reeeealy calling the kettle black. Too funny.

20 posted on 06/15/2003 9:15:28 PM PDT by lizma
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