The General Services Administration generally isn’t one of those departments that captures the public’s attention. The GSA is, by design, a behind-the-scenes agency — it helps other parts of the government function by managing federal contracts.
Of course, we’re in the midst of the Bush Era, during which every government office is little more than another political tool, which Karl Rove can exploit for the GOP’s gain.
Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove’s political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.
With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House’s deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.
When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could “help ‘our candidates’ in the next elections,” according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using “targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country.”
I wish I could say I’m surprised, but let’s not kid ourselves here. Is there anything in the federal government the Bush White House hasn’t politicized? The irony is, all of these efforts were perceived as necessary to help ensure electoral success. Instead of just doing a good job running the federal government, Republicans decided it was easier to manipulate levers of power to try to fool voters. They had it backwards — if they’d actually focused on performance, they wouldn’t have had to fool anyone.
Principles aside, however, this GSA story has the potential to be a huge problem (that is, another one) for the Bush administration.
To be sure, the GSA has been a source of trouble for the administration for quite a while. Remember David Safavian? He was the highest-ranking administration official charged in the Abramoff scandal — and he was head of the GSA. Moreover, we learned in December Bush’s choice to head the GSA has tried to undermine the ability of the agency’s inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste.
But today’s revelations are far more serious. For one thing, the Hatch Act strictly prohibits executive-branch employees from using their positions for political purposes. This would be a textbook example of what officials are not legally permitted to do — the whole point of the videoconference was for Karl Rove’s office to give Republicans credit for opening various federal facilities nationwide. Given the description of their chat, it was apparently quite blatant and it’s likely several GSA leaders are going to lose their jobs.
The White House defense for all of this is transparently ridiculous. The videoconference, a Bush spokesperson said, was simply to offer GSA administrators “a factual assessment of the political landscape.” These administrators manage federal contracts — why do they need a briefing from the White House on the political landscape?
But let’s go one step further. GSA administrators spoke with Scott Jennings, the White House’s deputy director of political affairs and Karl Rove’s right-hand man. If that name sounds familiar, there’s a very good reason for it. A TPM Muckraker reader explains:
By late fall of 2006, it was clear that the GOP was in a tailspin. The only remaining levers of power in Republican hands were held by the administration, and it had just two years left to reverse the tide. Evidently, Karl Rove decided that he had been insufficiently aggressive in using federal agencies to bolster the chances of Republican candidates. So he dispatched Jennings to convince the minions at GSA to ensure that every new federal project would have a Republican cutting the ribbon. (It’s worth noting that no one has bothered suggesting that Doan invited Jennings. That’s not how this works. Jennings was there because the White House sent him, and Doan went along. She’s likely to take the fall here, but this came straight from the White House.)
One of the puzzling aspects of the US Attorney purge is that it wasn’t completed until after the 2006 elections. So far, most allegations have focused on the notion that these US Attorneys failed to do enough to help Republican candidates win in 2006, by failing to investigate enough Democrats or to pursue scurrilous allegations of voter fraud. But it’s looking more and more like what happened here has more to do with 2008 than with 2006. Only two USAs were asked to step down before the elections: Cummins, to make room for a specific Rove disciple, and Chiara, whose office was a mess. The plan to dismiss the rest had festered for well over a year, but it kicked into high gear immediately after the elections. Sampson sent out the formal plan on Nov. 15, marking its importance ‘High’. “An associate of Rove” told the Times that Rove learned of the plan in November. And…wait for it…remember that 18 day gap? It begins on November 15.
What we’re going to find, if Congress successfully subpoenas officials or their e-mails, is that after the Republicans got routed in November of 2006 a panicked Karl Rove turned up the flame under lots of schemes that had simmered on the back burners for months or years. New orders went out – learn the lessons of the exit polling, and make sure that 2008 brings success. The White House, in its panic, abandoned caution, and got sloppy. It left its fingerprints all over the sorts of things it had generally manipulated at arms-length. And the man who headed up the effort, by all indications, was Karl Rove’s right hand, J. Scott Jennings.
Paul Kiel builds off the GSA controversy to call this the “unifying theory.” Sounds right to me.