by Bruce Bartlett
Washington is still atwitter over the resignation of Andrew Card as White House chief of staff and the appointment of his replacement, Josh Bolten, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Much of the buzz comes from the belief that President Bush may be listening to the Washington establishment, which has been urging him to reinvigorate his administration and lift his lowly poll ratings. If Mr. Bush were planning on changing direction in some way, staff changes might be useful. They might be a signal that a serious effort is being made this time around.
The problem is that only one part of Mr. Bush’s team ever gets shaken up. Whenever things are not working, the economic advisors seem to take most of the blame, while even dramatic failures by other staff members cause no repercussions. No one was fired for the prewar intelligence failures in Iraq. The person most to blame, George Tenet, the former Director of Central Intelligence, was given a medal. Michael Chertoff is still Secretary of Homeland Security even though his agency was responsible for many of the screw-ups related to Hurricane Katrina.
In contrast, in 2002, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was publicly fired — along with Larry Lindsey, Director of the National Economic Council — in a fashion that suggested there was more to it than a mere desire to change staff. Why Bush could not have told the two men privately that he wanted to make a change and allow them to leave with their dignity intact has never been explained. Instead, Vice President Dick Cheney phoned Mr. O’Neill to tell him he was out — this after Mr. O’Neill had personally asked Bush if he wanted him to leave and was told no. Mr. Lindsey was fired by Mr. Card the same day for no apparent reason.
Neither Mr. O’Neill nor Mr. Lindsey had been desperately clinging to their jobs. Both would have resigned in a heartbeat if they knew that the president was displeased with their performance. Both deserved to have Mr. Bush himself tell them they were out. The firings sent a message to everyone in the administration that they were expendable and could be dispensed with at a moment’s notice. They would not even be permitted the face-saving gesture of quitting for “personal reasons” if Mr. Bush thought there was some benefit to publicly throwing them overboard.
The effect was to dampen what little initiative and independence might have existed within the administration. Mr. O’Neill’s replacement, John Snow, got the message that he must not take the lead on any issue, even those in Treasury’s domain. His only job seems to be greeting every new economic statistic as if the nation had won the lottery. The economic news has been fairly good. But according to many news reports, Mr. Bush apparently still believes he has not gotten enough credit, and that this is the primary reason for his low poll ratings.
Mr. Bush’s managerial style has been manifestly unsuccessful — the imploding of his Social Security reform effort is one example — yet there is no indication that he will change his approach. Indeed, it seems that Mr. Bolten’s main job will be to enforce even greater discipline; it has been reported that his first job will be to find a replacement for Mr. Snow, whose departure has been rumored almost since the day he was sworn in.
I have no doubt that Mr. Bolten will do his job with ruthless efficiency, for he is the truest of Mr. Bush’s true believers. I know this because I have observed it firsthand.
Josh Bolten and I often worked together during the George H.W. Bush administration, when I was deputy assistant secretary for economic policy and he held positions in the White House and U.S. trade representative’s office. We weren’t pals, but we were always on friendly terms.
Then, a couple of years into the current administration, I saw him at a reception. I had just started writing some mildly critical things about some of Mr. Bush’s policies, like the Medicare drug program, which I thought was unaffordable. Up until that time, I had been almost entirely positive in my writings about the administration.
So I was taken aback when I went up to Mr. Bolten to say hello and he pointedly turned his back on me and walked away. I guess he thought he was punishing me for my criticism. All this did was confirm my growing belief that Mr. Bush would ultimately be a disaster for the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
The funny thing is that I was treated far better by Bill Clinton’s people while he was in office, even though I almost never had a good word to say about their positions. To their credit, they really believed in what they were doing and were almost evangelical in their desire to explain why it was right, even to Republicans like me who were unlikely to ever embrace their message. I have no doubt that if I had come across Gene Sperling, one of Clinton’s closest economic advisers, at such a reception, he would have come straight at me with a laundry list of facts and arguments for why I was wrong to be critical. I would have been invited to the White House mess to carry on the conversation, and I would have left with an armful of studies and statistics explaining the virtues of whatever Clinton program I was attacking.
By contrast, the Bush administration never provides its supporters with any ammunition to defend its positions, beyond the endless repetition of the day’s talking points. Even in Mr. Bush’s early days in the White House, when I was supporting the administration down the line and dealing with people I had known for years, I was never able to get anything substantive out them beyond the line of the day. I often had to do my own studies and crunch my own numbers to get evidence to support Mr. Bush’s policies.
So I see no reason to believe that anything substantive will change in this White House, no matter how many staff changes are made. This administration is like a gambler who doubles up after every losing hand in the vain hope of covering his losses. That strategy doesn’t work in Las Vegas, and it doesn’t work in Washington either.
Bush Bruce Bartlett Andrew Card Josh Bolton Impeach Bush King George
