As a political scientist I am often torn as I look at the political world both as the way things are as well as the way I would like them to be.
So while I find myself frustrated with the way Karl Rove treated the levers of government, I can’t ultimately be surprised. He had certain goals (i.e, to boost the President and the Republican Party and thereby to win elections) and he surveyed the tools available to him and used them to work towards those ends. As such, there is little to be surprised about in the following WaPo piece: How Rove Directed Federal Assets for GOP Gains. It is perfectly rational behavior by Rove and company. He sought to utilize the resources at his disposal to bolster his boss and the party, and there appears, at least based on the article’s content, to be nothing illegal about it. He just did a better job of figuring out these angles than anyone who went before him.
The short of it:
The staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to ensure the maximum promotion of Bush’s reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him, according to documents and some of those involved in the effort.
“The White House determines which members need visits,” said an internal e-mail about the previously undisclosed Rove “deployment” team, “and where we need to be strategically placing our assets.”
The idea of sending out members of the executive branch to bolster the image of the president or even to help a co-partisan in their home district was not new. What was new was Rove’s careful strategizing and deployment of these “assets.”
Moving from the empirical observations of what he did to the normative assessment of the actions, the thing I don’t like about this is that it takes members and actions of the federal government and reduces them to tools of partisan promotion rather than tools of policy implementation. What I would prefer to see, and think is in the best interest of our democracy, is for campaigns to take place, for votes to be cast and for officers to be elected, and then for those officers to govern for the appropriate amount of time. And then, when election season comes around, for the people to be given the chance to evaluate the job done, and then to make a new set of electoral decisions. We seem to have gotten to a place where too much focus is given to re-election rather than simply to governing. That latter phenomenon is not a surprise, but it still is, in my opinion, lamentable.
The main trouble, therefore, with Karl Rove is that he has helped to further elevate the permanent campaign within the federal government. And one can rest assured that the next president, regardless of political affiliation, will have learned those lessons and will seek to replicate them.
More on this story from James Joyner and also here, where he comments on a McClatchy News story that has similar details.
In that second post he notes that Republicans were up in arms over the Clinton administration’s usage of the Lincoln Bedroom and White House teas, yet seem to think that Rove’s strategies were simply brilliant politics. As Joyner notes:
regardless of the technicalities of the Hatch Act, this is at least as unseemly as renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to big donors or making otherwise legal fundraising calls from the wrong room in the Vice President’s office, as Bill Clinton and Al Gore were criticized for doing during the 2000 campaign. It’s funny how quickly the things that were objects of scorn when done by opponents become good ideas when parties change office.
Funny, but not surprising. Indeed, I would argue that the systematic deployment of executive branch officials for obvious electioneering activities (at least in aim) is far more problematic than the way Clinton used the Lincoln Bedroom or the hosting of the White House teas, and I thought those actions were wholly inappropriate.
Sphere: Related Content
August 19th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Do you see any workable remedy to the “constantly campaigning” problem? It seems that I recall an article in a Canadian newspaper, back in 2004, suggesting that the Parliamentary system somehow helps them avoid this type of problem, but I’m not sure how it would. Any thoughts?
August 19th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Did Bush Use Tax Dollars to Campaign for Republicans? [Updated]
As I sit down with my maple-sweetened decaf to scan news stories, I often wonder what questionable acts will grace the headlines. These days, it’s always something with the Bush Administration. If it’s not the firing of prosecutors based on partisan …
August 19th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
More On Corruption, A Direct Link To Rove
The Washington Post has also weighed in on the possible hanky-panky involving the White House, the Hatch Act and Karl Rove.
White House e-mails from October 2003 demonstrate a clear coordination of Cabinet-level visits to contested Republica…
August 19th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Dr. Taylor,
I share your lament. But the premise that federal agencies were “tools available” to Rove is entirely specious. They were and are not available, which is why the Hatch Act exists. Certainly this has been done before, hence the need for the Hatch Act, but Rove’s deployment of political operatives throughout federal agencies and the blatant use of them for campaign purposes has occurred at a level not seen before. And while it is one thing to use federal funds to bolster specific GOP candidates, co-opting the Department of what is now laughingly called “Justice” is perhaps the most serious of offenses.
When government begins prosecuting citizens for the political gains of one party or another and, in fact, tosses people in jail for those gains, a serious breach of the public trust has occurred. Already, defense council are using this egregious behaviour to paint prosecutions as politically motivated and they have every right to do that. The DoJ is now a suspected tool of the GOP and Rove has been the one responsible for that.
Again, this is and has never been a tool available to any party, although I’m not foolish enough to believe this has not happened previously at narrowly focused levels, under Rove it became a national strategy. As you say, this is entirely lamentable. My biggest concern, and yours too from what I see, is that this may now become standard operating procedure. And our vaunted “rule of law” will swirl further down the drain.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
At this time I am not sure that the activities in question were in violation of the Hatch Act, so I commented on the assumption that as far as I know, the actions were legal.
Indeed, at the moment I am with James Joyner in that that the “crime” here is what’s legal. (And how people are willing to manipulate the situation to their own ends).
I am not, btw, dismissing the notion that there could be illegalities here, but at the moment my guess is that there are not.
August 19th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
[...] I ran across a wonderful blog by the name of Poli Blog. It is authored by Dr. Steven Taylor, who is the Associate Professor of Political Science at Troy University. His article, The Main Trouble With Rove, caught my eye. [...]
August 20th, 2007 at 1:22 am
Dr. Taylor-
I am a fan. I have only been reading your blog for a little over a week, but I find myself checking it several times a day now. Your pace is exciting and your writing is flawless!
I liked this article so much that I decided to continue the conversation on my blog. I see the trackback was accepted and I appreciate that!
I never realized that Rove had essentially run a seven year campaign …twelve if you count the Texas years. No wonder the Bush Administration feels exhausting to me. I think Rove fell short of his goal of a Republican “super majority,” but he was EXTREMELY effective and that demands respect. He might not have fought fair, but he fought and won.
This was a great post! I really have enjoyed your blog! I look forward to your upcoming book! Take care!