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The Booby Pulpit

By William SaletanPosted Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001, at 3:00 AM ET

George W. Bush In an interview this week, George W. Bush marveled at how Bill Clinton redefined the presidency by time and again spinning his opponents into a jam. "I've learned some lessons from [him]," Bush told Tom Brokaw, "and one of them is how to use the bully pulpit to define relations with Congress." Good luck. The question of the next four years is how a president who can't talk his way out of a paper bag can get anything difficult through a sharply divided Congress. His Cabinet appointees are about to find out.

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Last Thursday, as liberal interest groups detailed charges of racism and radicalism against Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft and Interior Secretary nominee Gale Norton, reporters asked Bush to reply. Here's an excerpt from that news conference.

Reporter: Your secretary of the interior-designate, Gale Norton, made a speech a few years ago in which she lamented the loss in the Civil War [by] the Confederacy, because she said too much was lost, referring to states' rights doctrine. What do you say to citizens who might hear that and are concerned that your nominee's defending the states' rights position of the Confederacy may mean a retreat from federal protection through federal power of minority rights?

Bush: I'd say that's just a ridiculous interpretation of what's in her heart. She's been the attorney general of the state of Colorado. She's a person who upheld the laws of that state. She is—she in no way, shape or form was talking about any value to slavery. …

I picked John Ashcroft because he's a good attorney. He's going to be the attorney general, he's going to be the nation's lawyer, and he'll enforce the laws on the books. And people will get a chance to hear that. This, too, was a person who was elected to public office.

Watching this exchange, I was reminded of what my then future father-in-law said when he learned that his daughter was dating me: "He's Jewish, and he's employed." That's essentially Bush's defense of his nominees. He made it through an entire presidential campaign deflecting questions about his policies and his record by observing that his "heart" was pure, that he had been "elected" to office, and that he had "upheld" his state's laws. Having eked out victory, he thinks these vacuous assurances will suffice for governing. The Cabinet nomination fights, which senators tend to resolve in favor of the president, are likely to bolster his confidence in this approach. But when Democrats put campaign-finance reform on his desk and frame his tax cut as a reckless sop to the rich, Bush will have to do more than remind the public that he's Christian and employed.

To liberals, Bush's inarticulateness is a joke. But for conservatives, it's a problem. Ashcroft and Norton deserve better advocacy. The charge that Norton defended slavery is a cynical slur. What she actually said was that the Confederacy fought for two things—the principle of state sovereignty and the practice of slavery—and that the specific repugnance of the latter obscured the general merits of the former. Clinton would have had the brains and skill to explain this distinction. Bush, however, could only stammer that Norton was nice, had held a political job, and didn't really support slavery.

Republicans can find other spokesmen to defend their nominees and initiatives. But none of those spokesmen carries the weight of the president and each brings liabilities. The best defense of Ashcroft, for example, was presented two days ago on This Week:

He has signed a hate crimes bill. He put in a bill putting a five-year prison penalty on anyone who was convicted of a crime with a handgun. He has put a number of black jurists on the bench in Missouri. The first African-American in the history of Western Missouri went on the appeals court there, and he voted for 26 out of 28 of the African-American nominees to the bench in Washington.

Those words, delivered by the president-elect, might have swayed public opinion in Ashcroft's favor. Instead, they were overshadowed by the speaker, Pat Robertson—exactly the sort of public figure Ashcroft's opponents want to identify him with. This is the predicament Bush was supposed to resolve. Republicans have learned the hard way that control of Congress isn't enough. Without a coherent, authoritative voice, they can't beat the Democrats. For six years, they've waited for that voice. They're still waiting.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. Follow him on Twitter here.

Photograph of George W. Bush by Jeff Mitchell/Reuters.

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Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Notes from the Fray Editor: Also recommended: three star posters in one thread, here. A great Fray quote (Paul Decker starring again, here): "Unlike those of us in The Fray, Bush does not find politics to be inherently interesting." And a mean but irresistible joke under the title "An excellent opportunity to lab test education reform" here.]

Speechwriters are some of the most essential aides in any White House; even a President who is on top of the issues like Clinton or Nixon needs help in expressing views properly. Once Bush has all of his people in one place, with Cheney and Card to supervise them, he will at least be able to offer coherent arguments about important positions.

Nevertheless, the Bush quotes raise serious questions about the competence of his current staff. After all, the ludicrous anti-Norton argument can be rebutted simply. Bush's staff should have been able to give him a quick sound bite that he could have repeated to reporters, the way Reagan often did.

No wonder Bush has delegated so much personnel power to Cheney; judging by this incident, his current staff (which he selected) is not up to even the most minimal standards required in the White House. Without good staff-work, no politician has anything to defend himself with other than his wits, and Bush is not the only politician who would appear to be unarmed in that situation!

--Paul Decker

(To reply, click here.)

I would appreciate an articulate, well-reasoned defense of the cabinet nominees as much as Saletan, but that is not what the American people want. Saletan should acknowledge that most of the arguments against Ashcroft and Norton have been as lame and vacuous as anything Bush has said. However, when Bush lamely says that Norton and Ashcroft are "nice people" he is saying exactly what most people want to hear--and it's easy to believe because they are, in fact, nice people. Face it. Does Bush make lame statements because he's too inarticulate to do anything else, or is it part of a brilliant strategy? Maybe it's a little of both. Most likely it's just because Bush is in tune with most of the public--a scary thought.

--Chris Hargrove

(To reply, click here.)

If W. is so dumb, why does he keep outsmarting his brilliant liberal opponents? W. ran as a conservative, but a fair amount of his agenda was moderate (prescription drugs for seniors, for example). There's a fair amount of resistance to the Bush name among real conservatives, the Republican base. Bush shored that base up with picks like Ashcroft, a man who happens to be supremely qualified for the job. And then things got better for him. Liberals attacked his nominees, hoping to Bork them. Someone brilliant at the DNC evidently had the idea to have the Senate hold hearings on Ashcroft this week, while the Democrats are still in control of the Senate, so they could control the hearings, including the calling of witnesses like Ronnie White. That brilliant person evidently forgot that Borking someone takes time--the whole Bork nomination took a couple months to kill, not two weeks. Even in our ever-faster news world, there is just no chance to stop Ashcroft's nomination. So what have the Democrats and their handmaidens accomplished? They have further shored up W.'s base, evidently without harming his popularity in the polls. They will soon provide W. his first victory, as Ashcroft will surely win his fight for confirmation. And, through it all, W. will have gotten his wish: a big win, without any political capital expended, and with all the confrontation on the other side.

Saletan is convinced that because the man isn't Clinton (or Gore) that he can't possibly be a good communicator. It's true that W. can be inarticulate, but that doesn't mean that people don't know what he's saying. 50 million people evidently knew enough of what he was saying to vote for him. Bush's voice is coherent and authoritative and plenty persuasive. He just doesn't need to talk all the time. We have got a new man in town, and Saletan had better get used to it

--Thomas

(To reply, click here.)

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