Following yesterday’s front-page revelations about Karl Rove’s office offering detailed political briefings to diplomats and officials who help shape the administration’s international affairs, Tony Snow did his level best to argue the briefings were irrelevant.
Q: Could you offer some reaction to the story today that members of the diplomatic corps got briefings about the administration’s election goals? What’s the value of those briefings, and is it a politicization of —
SNOW: Not really. You’ve got political appointees getting political briefings. I’m shocked. Shocked.
Q: What’s the value of it, though, from a diplomatic mission?
SNOW: Well, look, a lot of times — I’m not sure the — let me put this way: To be briefed on what the goals of an administration are, if you are a representative of the administration, is useful. If you’re going to be — when you’re in the Nation’s Capital, you’re not only dealing with one-on-one issues, but you’re also representing the government. It’s perfectly legitimate for the White House to say, here are our goals, here are our objectives, this is what your executive branch is doing.
Q: What about the idea that politics should end at the water’s edge?
SNOW: Well, the fact is that this does not mean that they’re out churning for votes, they’re not doing fundraisers abroad. This is simply a briefing and I daresay that this is hardly unusual in this administration.
Given the political climate and recent events, this is probably a one-day scandal, but Snow’s response annoyed me.
Snow said, for example, that the political briefings for diplomats let officials know “what [the] executive branch is doing.” That’s absurd. The briefings were detailed reports and slide-shows about specific congressional races. By Snow’s reasoning, the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden needs to know what Karl Rove thinks about Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D) prospects in New Jersey next year. A middle manager at the Peace Corps should appreciate Rove’s concerns about whether Sen. Max Baucus (D) is seeking re-election in Montana. A USAID official concerned with sub-Saharan Africa should see Rove’s slides about Florida’s 12th congressional district.
That, in Snow’s words, is “perfectly legitimate.”
Snow added that these briefings are “hardly unusual in this administration.” But that’s the point; they should be unusual. It’s why no other modern White House has ever even tried to politicize diplomats and ambassadors this way.
“That just didn’t happen. Frankly, I am shocked to hear it,” said former senator James Sasser (D-Tenn.), who served as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to China in the late 1990s. “I’m one who strongly believes that politics ought to end at the water’s edge.”
James Dobbins, who was an ambassador in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said that some senior diplomats and State Department officials come from political backgrounds and stay informed through back channels.
But Dobbins, who rose through the Foreign Service ranks, said that he never attended an organized meeting for political appointees.
“I don’t know of any methodical effort to inform presidential appointees of the state of play in the domestic political arena,” he said.
Snow tried to dismiss this with sarcasm, but some people really were “shocked.”
Political briefings given by Bush White House aides to high-ranking diplomats “were probably inappropriate,” Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Tuesday. […]
Lugar, who chaired the committee when Republicans controlled the Senate, said in an interview that the ambassadors’ briefings “may have given an impression of a political organization continuing on while they were involved in their embassy posts. All things considered, I would prefer the briefings had not occurred.”
Lugar said the briefings seemed unnecessary because “the information that apparently was provided is available to us each day in political newsletters.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., said in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “I do not understand why ambassadors, in Washington on official duty, would be briefed by White House officials on which Democratic House members are considered top targets by the Republican Party for defeat in 2008. Nor do I understand why Department employees would need to be briefed on ‘key media markets’ in states that are ‘competitive’ for the President.”
It’s probably too much to ask, but Snow’s responses to reporters’ questions yesterday were insulting. They deserve some follow-up.