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.

[Susannah]

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.

Aha! And which president was seen signing the deregulation/conglomeration act in 1996?

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Republican and political amateurs tell me daily that the only important thing is to get the Clintons and Gores out of the White House."

That statement by RLK shows him to be the journalistic amateur that he is, he needs to spin the truth in order to make his "theories" work, there was never the idea that the ONLY thing that was important was to get Clinton/Gore out of the White House, this is just one further example of RLK's subtle lies. Getting Clinton/Gore out of the White House was the most important thing to be accomplished at the time of the elections. Wars are won by winning a series of battles, and that was the battle we were facing at the time.

The rest of the essay is the usual dribble, so I won't bother with it, but I will say this however:

Political theories like RLK's require a vacuum to succeed, we don't live in a vacuum, we live in a country where (GASP!) the other side has as much power, ability, and right to advance their political ideology as we do, at all times, so like in a war, we strategize, we calculate, we plan, and we deceive the “enemy” in order to gain the sort of advantage that will further our campaign, one battle at a time.

So while RLK feels quite macho when using words like "weakling" and "trash", I would like to point out that the biggest weakling here is himself, unable to advance even 1% of his agenda in the real world of politics. However, I don't think he notices this much, he's appears to be way to enamored with the sound of his own voice to notice the world outside his study.

[fourdeuce82d]

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.

Let us hope.

[nyconse]

Clinton saved social welfare programs? This will be news to those who were forced off welfare roles during his tenure. He signed a welfare reform bill after his pollsters told him most American favored welfare reform. The two party system was alive (sarcasm) when Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and from time to time the Presidency. It appears the two party system only works if Democrats are in complete control. President Bush is trying to destroy Democratic election chances....I thought that was what you were supposed to do. It's called politics.

[nyconse]

funny stuff.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"The rest of the essay is the usual dribble..."

Has it ever occured to you that perhaps such flippant criticism of such densely written analysis indicates that the critic is entire too dull to understand such analysis, and that such flippancy also indicates that the critic is projecting his own inadequacies on the writer?

Here's a short political fill-in-the-blank /multiple choice test which helps the test taker distinguish "conservative" from "liberal" popular personalities.

The following are excerpts from a March 23, 2002 Washington Times piece by Bill Sammon.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------- Urges More Foreign Aid

"MONTERREY, Mexico: -------- yesterday said Americans are duty-bound to 'share our wealth' with poor nations and promised a 50 percent increase in foreign aid, but 'We should give more of our aid in the form of grants, rather than loans that can never be repaid,' he said. 'We should invest in better health and build on our efforts to fight AIDS, which threatens to undermine whole societies.'

In addition to the moral, economic and strategic imperatives of increasing foreign aid, ------ said, it could also help in the war against terrorism.

'We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and try to turn to their advantage."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who is quoted above?
a) Bill Clinton
b) Al Gore
c) Hillary Clinton
d) Jessie Jackson
e) Reverend Al What's-His-Name
f) Bono and the pop band U2
g) Whoopie Goldberg
h) George W. Bush

Hint: he's very popular here at Free Republic.

[Southack]

"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."

RLK made some good points up until this last paragraph.

40 years ago the far Left was represented by hardcore Black Panthers, hardly the meager Left of today.

40 years ago the Left wanted the U.S. out of all wars, hardly Lieberman's position on Iraq or Gore's position on Afghanistan today.

40 years ago the Left wanted to nationalize health care, yet today you won't hear an electable Leftist even *breathe* such a threat (though they very well still want it) out loud.

40 years ago the Left wore red T-shirts stating "The Time is Mao", hardly something that you see in Washington today (outside of a few imported protesters, anyway).

In contrast, the Right has been winning battle after battle by pursuing incrementalism. We control the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, the Presidency, more than half of all state governors, and more than half of all state legislatures.

40 years ago there were more Democrats registered to vote (by almost 2 to 1), than Republicans. Today, they are about even in numbers.

40 years ago all unions were Democratic on all issues, but today unions are FIGHTING Democrats and Leftists regarding new job creation through drilling in the ANWR and rejecting the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty.

40 years ago Congress was passing national gun control laws. Today, Congress is arming pilots and immunizing gun manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits.

40 years ago the U.S. was willing to sign the CCCP-U.S. ABM treaty, but today we are willing to reject it.

And we didn't get this far from where we were 40 years ago by throwing long bomb passes every down. No, we did it through incrementalism.

This is precisely what Bush is doing today. We get one tax cut, fine. Then he goes for another and gets it, too. Some provisions aren't "permanent", so later he goes for extending or even making them permanent. Old treaties, one by one, get rejected. Old executive orders and regulations, one by one, get rejected or reversed.

Incrementally, Bush is rolling back the Left. The International Cirminal Court no longer threatens Americans. CO2 regulations are no longer choking electricity providers. Families of four making $40,000 per year are now only paying $45 per year in federal income taxes. The U.S. Dollar is no longer so over-valued that it props up the exporting economies of old, socialist Europe. The newspaper industry is no longer provided an anti-competitive monopoly position that prohibits conservative radio companies from buying newspapers or starting up fresh competition.

Little by little, the Left is being rolled back. In the next 6 years, Bush will even get vouchers passed, and private schools will soon thereafter destroy the political power of the public school teachers' unions.

But none of this would have been possible if Bush had tried to go for it all in one step. It had to come one small piece at a time. Removing the double taxation of dividends was clearly *not* something that could have been done in the first tax cut, for instance, but it was possible in the 2nd.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"...densely written analysis..."

Oh, please. There was nothing "dense" about it other than the author.

The "writer" and others like him have been putting out the sort of smokescreen that you're so enamoured with for decades, to a net-net result of zero impact on any level of government anywhere.

BTW, it really doesn't matter who the article was talking about, if you had a clue about the way our monetary system works, you would understand the need to export dollars out of our economy. Foreign aid is little more than us exporting our inflation.

[Sonny M]

Clinton saved social welfare programs? This will be news to those who were forced off welfare roles during his tenure. He signed a welfare reform bill after his pollsters told him most American favored welfare reform.

I never said he saved the welfare programs, I do however have a gripe with him getting the credit for it, and for getting credit at the same time for reforming welfare. The fact of the matter was, the republican congress had made welfare reform a key issue, and they were going to bludgeon him with it. Clinton fought as much as could, then signed off, and claimed the credit from both sides.

The person who actually gave him the polling numbers and also told him how to spin it, and make it look good and get credit from people that work and people on welfare was Dick Morris.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Hell!

Forty years ago, John F. Kennedy was a staunch anti-communist.

Today his Party is populated with communists.

Little wonder they never mention JFK anymore.

[RLK]

The article was written at a time referring to 1959 or 60. crowds of people weren't wearing Mao Tee shirts then. Now if you are talking about 1968, that was a different world than five or six years earlier. How old are you?

[RLK]

-------- yesterday said Americans are duty-bound to 'share our wealth' with poor nations

-------------------------

If a Democrat were making statements such at this the yokels here would be enraged and shouting COMMUNIST SOB. But many people here have no more integrity than the Democrats or the Left. Once they convince themselves to support somebody, they will lie to themselves and lie to everyone else to continue justifying it.

[Jhoffa_]

Bump..

[arasina]

Ooooh. Mr. Gabler makes it all sound so eeeeeevil, but he comes across as so greeeeeeeen with envy at the political savvy of Dubya's administration.

Is the Alameda Times-Star's motto "Alameda News is All Made Up"?

[arasina]

It is actually the dismantling of the New Left.

They just change their name to "Progressives" and hope that'll entice voters to head down their path. (Notice how much Dims have used that term in the past few months.)

I get a mental picture of these so-called Progressives at a crossroad. They can choose to go left or even further left. Karl Rove is at the center of the path and while they decide (that is, use focus groups) he nudges an issue out to the center and that trips them up. They end up going off the deep end. :-)

[arasina]

Democrat Projection

Exactly. (You beat me to it.)

[Moonman62]

Reagan genuinely believed that government was bad.

Reagan believed that government was the solution of last resort. He wasn't an anarchist.

[arasina]

Very well stated, Luis!

[Faraday]

But as a political matter, the war struck the Democratic Party at one of its vulnerabilities: the idea that they're weak on defense.

Well, whose effing fault is that? Neal Gabler should do what he's good at--smile a lot.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Here's a site to which you two might like to submit some of your favorite words. It gives you an opportunity to expand upon what they mean to you.

Here's two entries that appear to be speaking your language already.

Ideological Corral

Progressive

You might also want to check out the social engineering entry. Maybe it makes sense to you.