The fact that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has abandoned her traditionally non-political role to hit swing states for Bush raised a few eyebrows last week, but the reality is she’s hardly the only one.
Just as the NSA has always been kept separate from partisan politics, so too has the Treasury secretary. Until now.
Snow, ridding us at long last of that annoying and silly tradition of keeping the Treasury Department above the political fray, continues his work in states seen as critical to President Bush on Election Day.
As of last week, Snow had logged 11 weeks of brutal travel to give “non-campaign” speeches in the Midwest and Florida. Since Aug. 6, 21 of the 23 speeches Snow has given on the nation’s economic health have been in political battleground states, including 13 in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The other two speeches were in New York City.
This week, Snow continued the pace, heading back to the Midwest on Tuesday for a talk to the Franchise Business Roundtable at the International Dairy Queen Inc. headquarters in Minneapolis, followed by a talk Wednesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and wrapping up yesterday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
What a remarkable coincidence. Last October, Snow made four appearances outside DC — and two of them weren’t even in the United States. This October, he’s in swing states for multiple “non-campaign” speeches. Any chance this has something to do with helping Bush?
And let’s not forget Snow’s deputies.
Deputy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman was in Reading, Pa., this week and Undersecretary for International Affairs John B. Taylor visited Cleveland. Other top officials have made the rounds regularly to the key states, including Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
So the Treasury Department has been about as politicized as the national security advisor’s office. How about everyone’s favorite cabinet secretary, Donald Rumsfeld?
The New Republic’s Spencer Ackerman reported this week that Rumsfeld, officially, has been told to steer clear of campaign politics, presumably because Defense secretaries have never hit the campaign trail in the past. But unofficially good ol’ Rummy has been a mainstay on right-wing radio, doing 10 interview in eight weeks, all the while avoiding substantive discussion with real journalists covering the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld has chatted with radio hosts in battleground states like Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, and West Virginia, as well as in safely red states like North Carolina, Texas, North Dakota, and Alabama. For good measure, he also granted an interview to Sean Hannity’s widely syndicated radio program and stopped by the Richmond International Raceway for a brief chat with the Motor Radio Network. (Believe it or not, this was how Rumsfeld commemorated the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks.)
Of course, the defense secretary can always plead that he’s not making campaign appearances, just feeding the public’s hunger for information. Yet while Rumsfeld has boosted his radio exposure, the Pentagon press corps has been starved for his attention. Once an unavoidable presence on CSPAN, Rumsfeld has held only two press conferences in the last two months. The Bush campaign would no doubt argue — as Dan Bartlett did in defending Rice’s recent stops in battleground states — that it’s “totally appropriate” for Rumsfeld to “explain the actions we are taking” in foreign policy. But, according to the Pentagon’s transcripts Web page, Rumsfeld’s predecessors Bill Perry and Bill Cohen didn’t make any preelection dashes around the radio dial in 1996 and 2000 to offer such explanations.
Is there anything that the Bush gang won’t politicize? Apparently not.