I was initially prepared to blow this off. The administration announced over the weekend that Secretary of State Colin Powell wouldn’t appear at this year’s Republican convention. Fine; he played a pretty big role at the last convention, but the party already has a full slate of GOP moderates on the bill and don’t need him this year. Bush has ignored the guy for four years anyway, so I suspect few party leaders will even notice his absence.
But the reason this inconsequential announcement continues to circulate is the administration’s inability to explain why Powell won’t be in New York with the rest of the gang.
Every time they try and justify Powell’s absence, they say something that’s untrue, which in turn makes it seem like there’s more to this story than there should be. Consider:
“On White House instruction, Secretary Powell as well as others among the Cabinet, will not attend,” State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Tuesday. “This is in keeping with past practice.”
That’d be a fine explanation, if both of these sentences weren’t completely wrong.
The first mistake was saying that Powell won’t be there, but neither will “others among the Cabinet.” I guess they forgot that the party gave Secretary of Education Rod Paige a prime-time slot on August 31, the same night as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Laura Bush.
The second part was saying this is the way it’s always been done. This just isn’t true. In addition to giving Paige a major role this year, previous GOP conventions have featured plenty of sitting cabinet secretaries. As Salon’s Stephen W. Stromberg noted recently:
[I]f you hark back to the days when the Republicans had sitting Cabinet members to speak at their national nominating conventions, the “tradition” seems even less, well, traditional. Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole addressed the 1988 Republican National Convention, and in 1984, Dole, Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler and Chief U.S. Delegate to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had Cabinet rank, all took the lectern.
So, what’s the deal? I can understand why Powell wouldn’t be welcome at Bush’s convention — he’s been at odds with the White House’s agenda from the beginning — but by making up false justifications, the Republicans are creating a controversy where there shouldn’t be one.
I’m not usually in the habit of helping these guys out, but here’s a tip for the GOP: just say no sitting Secretary of State has ever appeared at a political convention. It’s true and it’s better than the nonsensical spin you’ve been throwing around lately.