Perhaps the most important quote anyone has ever offered to describe the Bush White House came from John DiIulio, a former domestic policy adviser for Bush who led the president’s “faith-based” initiative in 2001.
“There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus,” DiIulio told Esquire last year. “What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”
Truer words were never spoken.
DiIulio’s point was bolstered — as it has been for three years — by front-page articles in today’s Washington Post and USA Today on White House consideration of a plan to send Americans back to the Moon.
As the articles, particularly the Post’s, make clear, this is not about science or research, it’s about politics and campaign symbolism. Indeed, the Post noted that lunar exploration is part of an effort to “sift ideas for a fresh agenda for the final year of [Bush’s] term.”
But here’s the key sentence: “The development of big ideas for Bush’s 2004 agenda is being led by the president’s senior adviser, Karl Rove.”
Of course it is. The White House has run out of agenda items, they can only have Bush call for more tax cuts for the wealthy so many times before it becomes ridiculous, and they need “big ideas” to distract people from the administration’s domestic, foreign, and economic failures.
So what do White House officials do? They don’t turn to policy advisors or conservative think tanks, they don’t ask cabinet secretaries, and they certainly don’t ask the president for his guiding principles of government. No, they ask Bush’s svengali to think of something that will make Bush look bold — and he recommends shooting for the Moon. Literally.
It’s not that I have anything against the Moon or space travel in general. The problem is that the Bush administration isn’t looking for worthy policy goals to pursue for the nation’s benefit; it’s looking for policies it can sell in commercials.
Administration officials admitted that they’re looking for a “Kennedy moment” for Bush, to help him appear to have a daring vision for the future.
The Post reported that one White House official explained that “Bush’s closest aides are promoting big initiatives on the theory that they contribute to Bush’s image as a decisive leader even if people disagree with some of the specifics.”
The official told the Post, “Iraq was big. AIDS is big. Big works. Big grabs attention.”
It’s not about effective or efficient government; with Bush, it’s about attention-grabbing government.
This is eerily similar to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card’s admission in September 2002 that the administration appeared to be in disarray over Iraq, but this was all part of a deliberate strategy.
“From a marketing point of view,” Card told the New York Times, “you don’t introduce new products in August.”
Exactly. Governing through marketing strategies. Exactly what one should expect from a White House that has “a complete lack of a policy apparatus.”