Bush's ideological facade hides political goal

Alameda Times-Star ^ | June 15, 2003 - 5:06:22 PM PST | Neal Gabler

[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.

[RLK]

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

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But you are a leftist and I don't agree with you.

[RealEstateEntrepreneur]

Why is a question of being ideological OR politically savvy?

Why can't you be a politically savvy, incrementalist ideologue? And what's what Bush is (with great help from Rove).

[Southack]

You can sum this article up thusly:

"It's all about politics, and Karl Rove is the real brains behind the puppet."

And of course, the Left still doesn't get it. IF, big *IF*, it was all about politics, then Bush would be nominating moderates to the federal bench, rather than nominating fire-breathing conservatives (e.g. Pryor, Estrada, Owens) who drive the Left nuts.

You don't "co-opt" your opposition's positions by nominating their ideological enemies to the bench. No, such actions will instead rally your opposition to take uniform stands (e.g. filibusters).

But that's far too complicated to explain to any Ph.D'd Lefty that you might have the unpleasantness to meet on the street.

So much for the "it's all about politics" nonsense, then. Bush's federal judge nominations clearly debunk that theory.

And if Rove is such the behind-the-scenes genius, why is it that Bush hasn't flubbed up in public?

Time and time again the Left has told us that Dubya was so dumb that he couldn't handle foreign politics or manage to control foreign leaders.

Yet when have we seen a foreign "leader" roll over Bush?!

Thus, the lie that Rove is the brains is easily disproven by observing that it is Bush who wins each time he meets face to face with foreign leaders, not the other way around. Let's face it, Rove can't be around all the time, and he can't tell Bush what to say to those leaders when it is mano-e-mano, so it has to be that Bush is winning against those diplomats on his own.

But that ruins the cozy little fantasy world that liberals have crafted for themselves. They have to believe that Bush is dumb, as their worldview depends upon Bush and his ideas being all wrong.

[RLK]

Incrementalist... That's funny.

[RealEstateEntrepreneur]

Funny?

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Why can't you be a politically savvy, incrementalist ideologue?"

The political ingénue around these parts can't "see" that.

Baseball has innings, football has quarters, years have months, weeks have minutes...these people follow the absurd idea that ideology without political strategy can help advance the conservative cause better than the incrementalist approach. They believe that while everything else works incrementally, in politics you have to score, or even win every game, by going for it all on every single play. In spite of the fact that all this strategy has ever brought them is defeat, they cling to it.

If Bush advances even one of the ideas generally recognized as being part of "the conservative agenda", he will accomplish more than they ever will.

Imagine that this was an actual war, and that elections are actual battles. These politically naive individuals would agree that the battle had to be fought, they just didn't agree with everyone else on the location. So while the main bodies of the opposing armies beat the hell out of each other locked in battle for God and Country on some bloody field, these guys would be standing about twelve miles away from the engagement, bitterly complaining that no one showed up to fight them.

[numberonepal]

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.

Frickin' DUH! What administration doesn't do this? Amateurs do not get to the White House.

The article does seem a bit paranoid, but the fact that this Administration is taking a jackhammer crew and wrecking ball to the Democratic foundation is dean on. IMHO, I think they should use someting more metaphorically extreme - say C4?

[InterceptPoint]

I'm sure everyone will slam this guy but lets face it, he is pretty much on the right track.

Bush and Rove are trying to build a Republican majority for the ages, one that will last. That is what all administrations do, despite what this Dem Dumbo wants us to believe. The bottom line of his argument is that it is a bad thing for the Republicans to try to dismantle the Democrat organized institutions like the Teachers Union that feed off the Government and support the Democrat Party. The trial lawyers are in the same group. The simple fact that these political links exist doesn't mean that they are somehow God given and immortal. They were put together for political gain and they can be justifiably dismantled for the same reason.

How do spell sour grapes?

[petuniasevan]

The above article:

Nah, need something stronger.

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[Avoiding_Sulla]

There is so many items I was going to highlight and point out that they were Democratic tactics that I just gave up. Others here have already beat me to it on a number of posts. To all of you I tip my hat.

I will simply add that this political "analysis" belongs filed in what may already be your most oversized computer folder. That folder would be appropriately titled:

Democrat Projection

[Mortimer Snavely]

RLK wrote this a while back. It bears repeating:

"Republican and political amateurs tell me daily that the only important thing is to get the Clintons and Gores out of the White House. Nothing could be further from the truth and this thinking is an ultimate deathtrap. Without a highly articulate spokesman advancing a well thought out broad agenda, winning an election is an ultimate disaster during which your opposition gets a rest period while the world watches your candidate prove the criticisms the opposition made during their election campaign. You lose leverage during your own term in office because of internal organizational dissension and directionlessness. You've simultaneously undermined your ideological and political strength in future elections. Winning an election with an incompetent or compromising or compromised candidate is deferred suicide.

The worst thing that can happen is to win an election with someone who is too incompetent, or is reluctant, to confront and refute your ideological enemy. It makes a better case for the view that the enemy is so correct as to be unrefutable than the enemy could make by himself. Ideological silence or ineptitude confers an image of indominability, immortality, invulnerability, and permission upon the opposition. The message given is that the only thing your presidential candidate can do is lamely apologize by embarrassed silence for not adopting the ideology of the political left. Your supporters are betrayed to find when they vote against the opposition they still have no voice and the opposition remains the dominant political voice.

In subsequent elections that image of indominability and permission are used against you. The ideological weaknesses of your weak previous office-holder are declared by the radical left opposition to be the wise valid positions of your party, while deviation from weaknesses and attempts to correct them are labeled extremism. A competent new candidate in your party is nearly mortally crippled by needing to spend as much time and effort refuting or reversing the silent ineptitude and embarrassment of the previous officeholder from his own party as he does making a rational ideological case. This allows the opposition the opportunity to present your candidate as being a divergent radical within his own party for saying what the previous candidate or officeholder was too inept or disinclined to say.

Concurrently, you find your own political party has become a comfortable nesting place for an influx of weaklings and trash now promoting and attempting to extend the agreeable softness and weakness of weak predecessors.

It must be understood there absolutely is no such thing as a moderate or center position in politics where there is a radical left. Any time your candidate moves half way to accommodate or make peace with the left, the left responds by moving farther left, which then moves the middle point farther left. Consequently, in the last 40 years moderation and middle ground have been moving targets receding leftward at the speed of light as so-called moderates and peacemakers desperately and lamely pursue the endlessly moving average set and reset by ever-increasing radicalism and pathology on the left. The shift has been such that the leftist position of 40 years ago is now called right-wing extremism.

Electing peacemakers and "nice guys" in dealing with the radical left is the equivalent of quitting the antibiotic medication which is fighting an infection threatening to turn into gangrene. The infection gains strength while unopposed, and your political party or next presidential candidate faces the future having lost an arm or a leg. "

[Uncle Bill]

((((Loud Clapping))))

[RLK]

Consequently, in the last 40 years moderation and middle ground have been moving targets receding leftward at the speed of light as so-called moderates and peacemakers desperately and lamely pursue the endlessly moving average set and reset by ever-increasing radicalism and pathology on the left. The shift has been such that the leftist position of 40 years ago is now called right-wing extremism.

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Yup. And somebody here conjured up the word incrementalism in an attempt to avoid seeing the reality.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"Why can't you be a politically savvy, incrementalist ideologue? And what's what Bush is..."

Bush is "incrementing" us further and further left. His vision of the USA is more like Huey Long's "Share the Wealth" noise than anything else, with Bible verses to support it.

[Mortimer Snavely]

Shakespeare was able to conjure up words and phrases which expanded thinking. Madison Avenue and the like create words and phrases to achieve the opposite effect. Language is the vehicle of thought. Organizing words represents concepts, and that is what language is all about. Organizing words rationally is called thinking.

English is very flexible. It can be spliced together so that whole concepts can be represented in words, which can either expand or contract the ability to think. Orwell wrote about this at length.

[RLK]

You said it better than I could.

[jagrmeister]

Laughably paranoid. In a representative democracy, politics and policy are like overlapping strands of DNA. In pursuit of good politics, good policy is produced and vice-versa. The people are the final arbiters of whether policy is good or not- and they make their judgment known through elections.

[GatekeeperBookman]

This is good news-the actions have been effective & the left screams. I like it.

[mombonn]

I believe this guy appears in that Fox News Watch show on FNC.

Never trust a smiling liberal.