Because “loyalty” is among the most important traits the president looks for in personnel decisions, it’s relatively rare to have White House aides and administration officials dish the dirt after they return to the private sector. It’s not that they didn’t see potentially damaging things during their service; it’s that they a) don’t want to undermine the president politically; and b) are afraid of what Karl Rove may do to them.
With this in mind, Daivd Kuo, the former deputy director of the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has taken something of a risk by writing “Tempting Faith.” It not only exposes a callous Bush gang who mock and exploit sincere religious activists, it also highlights the fact that the faith-based initiative itself was little more than a partisan tool, intended to help the GOP, not those in need of social services.
Considering the importance of the religious right to the Republican Party, Kuo’s revelations, emerging less than a month before the midterm elections, could have a political impact. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Michael Currie Schaffer thinks Rove will probably break out the smear stick.
[Bush] supporters have every reason to reach for their shivs: Unlike, say, Bob Woodward, whose audience likely skews toward Bush-doubters, Kuo threatens to sully the president in the eyes of his most fervent supporters, the evangelical base that the GOP desperately needs next month. Himself a Christian conservative, Kuo has worked for the likes of John Ashcroft and William Bennett. He has a great reputation. Letting him keep it could be a recipe for Election Day disaster.
Kuo is scheduled to appear on “60 Minutes” Sunday night. By Monday, if Team Bush is still on its game, significant chunks of America should suspect that Kuo is an atheist, a money-grubber, a media whore, and the president of his local Hitler Youth chapter. By the end of the week, you should be hearing one of two sounds: Kuo’s apology, or a very loud quacking noise.
Press Secretary Tony Snow already started going after Kuo yesterday, but it was mild compared to what the White House is capable of. That said, my hunch is that a Kuo apology is unlikely — an probably unneccessary. Others have betrayed the Bush gang and survived just fine.
Looking back over the last few years, you can count on two hands all of the high-profile dissenters who had Bush’s confidence and then publicly exposed the president’s foibles. They fall into two groups: those who stuck to their guns, and those who issued zombie-like recantations.
Jonathan Chait highlighted the latter group last year:
* Doug Wead — Doug Wead was presumably aware of the commonly held view that it isn’t very nice to secretly tape-record conversations with your friends and then release those tapes to the New York Times…. Yet somehow Bush, or his allies, managed to make these issues far more compelling to Wead after the fact than they ever had been before. Earlier this week, Wead was proclaiming that he made his tapes of Bush public for the sake of “history.” … [W]ithin a couple days he was desperately backpedaling. On Wednesday, he announced that “I have come to realize that personal relationships are more important than history.” He pledged to direct all book profits to charity and to hand the tapes over to Bush.
* Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) — A former dentist, Norwood had grown infuriated at the callousness of health maintenance organizations and made a patient’s bill of rights his crusade. Bush sought to kill Norwood’s bill by promoting a toothless, industry-friendly alternative. In the spring of 2001, Norwood blasted Bush’s sham bill as worse than the status quo and vowed to “personally exhaust every effort to defeat” Bush’s plan. Then Norwood was summoned to the White House. As one newspaper reported, he “emerged from the hourlong meeting looking haggard” and instantly announced his support for Bush’s bill.
* John DiIulio — In 2002, John DiIulio, the former director of Bush’s faith-based initiative, criticized the administration. “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm,” he said, fleshing out the critique with damning details. The next day, DiIulio announced that “my criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. I sincerely apologize and am deeply remorseful.”
This is fairly compelling evidence that Bush allies who cross him suddenly find a horse-head in their bed, causing them to reverse course and submissively pledge allegiance to the White House.
On the other hand, the “Stepford critics” seem to be outnumbered by those who stuck to their guns.
Paul O’Neill, for example, who was fired from his post as Treasury Secretary, helped Ron Suskind write a devastating book, and though he later hedged about word choice, he never fully reversed course. Likewise, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke saw Bush’s failures first hand, went public through the 9/11 Commission, and continues to criticize the president. Rand Beers, Bush’s special assistant to the president for combating terrorism at the National Security Council, resigned in frustration over the president’s negligent attitude about the terrorist threat, went public, and never looked back. Former General Anthony Zinni, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command and Bush’s former hand-picked special envoy to the Middle East, went public with a blistering attack on the administration and its handling of the war in Iraq, but never offered a Rove-written recantation.
In each instance, someone with close contact with Bush saw a misguided White House and felt compelled to come forward with the information they gleaned first-hand. Also in each instance, the White House tried to smear their critics, with varying degrees of success.
Mr. Kuo, if you’re reading, tell it like it is and don’t worry too much about Rove. It’s more than possible to “betray” the president, stick to your guns, and live to tell the tale.