Roll Call’s Stuart Rothenberg was invited to do a TV segment last week, speculating on whether the Bush administration waged an aggressive diplomatic effort to assist Abdur Rahman in Afghanistan in order to satisfy the Republican base. Rothenberg not only turned the TV producer down, he was disappointed that the idea even occurred to anyone.
Frankly, I was shocked at the question, since the underlying premise was that the president of the United States would respond to the possible execution primarily in the context of domestic political pressures.
I guess the people working on the story had visions of the president, Karl Rove and a couple of other White House staffers sitting around talking about what the president had to say to make Pat Robertson, James Dobson or Gary Bauer happy.
I know that people in Washington, D.C., assume that politics pervades everything, and that politicians don’t make a move without calculating the political costs. But in this case, I argued, that assumption simply was wrong.
“Are you suggesting,” I asked rhetorically, “that the president — or any normal American — would react differently if someone were being executed because he or she had converted to Judaism or to Islam?” Why else bring the Christian right into the story?
I know some journalists are obsessed with the political influence of the religious right, but the idea that the president’s response would, to a considerable extent, be crafted to pacify evangelical Republicans is ridiculous.
I want to believe that Rothenberg’s right. I don’t.
I think Rove & Co. do sit around the West Wing trying to make Dobson & Co. happy. I think innocents face execution around the world, but the administration took a special interest in this case because of the political implications. I feel pretty confident that “calculating the political costs” is central to the way the White House operates.
The relationship between the Republican political establishment (including the White House) and the party’s religious-right base is complicated. Dobson & Co. want serious policy advancements on issues like abortion and gay rights. Rove & Co. would prefer to just string the far-right along without delivering anything in the way of major legislative victories, but throwing the movement the occasion bone (Terri Schiavo legislation, for example).
It’s what made the Rahman controversy a key political issue. The religious right went apoplectic and demanded action. The administration, which can’t risk further erosion in support at the base, responded. Rothenberg thinks that’s far too cynical. I wish I could agree.