The Second Bush White House
BARNES, FRED
The Second Bush White House The model is Gerald Ford's "spokes of the wheel," not Bush I. BY FRED BARNES IT'S GOING TO BE CROWDED in the Oval Office of President George W. Bush. Andrew Card will...
...He will also play a major role in foreign and defense policy...
...Bush was elected by holding together a shrunken version of the old Reagan coalition: conservatives, men, married people, evangelical Christians, southerners...
...He's been the chief strategist for Republican candidates of all types—country club, moderate, pro-choice, conservative...
...A staffer said that at campaign meetings attended by Hughes, among others, Bush himself was invariably the most conservative person in the room...
...As press secretary, she probably would not have been a factor in policy disputes at the White House...
...Rove understands the Reagan coalition," says Grover Norquist, the conservative who heads Americans for Tax Reform...
...As a conservative, I'm very comfortable that Rove will always be in sync with the coalition...
...Now, as vice president, Cheney will be the biggest spoke of all, only he won't be around the White House as much as the others, given his duties on Capitol Hill and elsewhere...
...Rove also lured conservative intellectuals to Austin in recent years for chats with Bush...
...Bush would do the same this year, Rove predicted...
...Given Hughes's expanded role, her political views become important...
...Ari Fleischer, who takes the job in her stead, will have to work to develop that kind of relationship with Bush...
...It means the coterie of advisers with the most influence in shaping Bush's presidential campaign will be just as significant in charting the direction of his administration...
...Along that line, he's hired a Washington attorney, Lewis Libby, as his chief of staff...
...Mike McCurry, President Clinton's former spokesman, says a press secretary can't function properly if he or she is involved on one side or another in internal struggles...
...This sounds like the "spokes of the wheel" scheme at the White House of President Gerald Ford...
...Hughes fits the bill...
...The expectation had been that she'd become press secretary and deliver the daily briefing...
...It didn't quite work out that way...
...She sounded like a conservative," one participant said...
...These included Myron Magnet, Richard John Neuhaus, John J. Dilulio Jr., and David Horowitz...
...During the campaign, he put Bush in the center of it...
...Unlike some Republican moderates, however, he is no conservFred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Not a movement conservative, but at least she wanted to reach out to us...
...The complaints weren't quite fair, but reporters believed them nonetheless...
...The Bush presidency, at the start anyway, will be center-right...
...But she didn't get along with reporters during the campaign and decided to kick herself upstairs...
...Bureaucratically, Hughes will have a bigger role at the White House than Rove...
...He was friendly and accommodating to conservatives when he worked in Bush senior's White House, and he won't have any choice but to act the same under George W. Conservatives are Bush's indispensable allies now...
...Probably not as conservative as Bush...
...Another Rove aide, Chris Henick, will be White House liaison to governors...
...The coterie of advisers with the most influence in shaping the campaign will be just as significant in charting the direction of the new administration...
...Good advice...
...As veep, Cheney will surely continue to have unfettered access...
...Whether they know it or not, they did Hughes a favor by grousing about her...
...Reporters likened her getting-along skills to those of Nurse Ratched, the authoritarian figure in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...
...In the Bush White House, he will surely have more clout than any vice president, ever...
...Of course she's a Bush person first...
...Andrew Card will have the title of white House chief of staff, but in truth a troika of equals will have instant access to the president: Card, political adviser Karl Rove, and communications czarina Karen Hughes...
...Gerson had previously worked for Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, Dan Coats, and Chuck Colson—and will become chief White House speechwriter...
...What's important about Rove's dream coalition, which he thinks may yet emerge, is that it would not supplant the Reagan coalition but build on it...
...But he starts with better relations with reporters, for what that's worth...
...Then, a half dozen aides had the privilege of dropping by the Oval Office any time without prior approval of the chief of staff...
...It didn't at the Ford White House...
...In Texas, hard-core conservatives have their doubts about Rove...
...What they need is a press secretary who's close to the president, trusted by him, and consistently able to reflect his views accurately...
...And Rove was critical in hiring a gifted young conservative writer, Mike Ger-son, as Bush's campaign speechwriter...
...As Bush's top political adviser, Rove has drawn an analogy between 2000 and 1896, when Republican William McKinley put together a new coalition, including a strong working class element, and won the presidency...
...When Cheney was defense secretary in the first Bush administration, Libby was an aide...
...As for Cheney, his conservatism is not in doubt, though he's hardly a zealot...
...How conservative is she...
...What does all this structural and personnel stuff add up to...
...Maybe so...
...For one thing, Cheney will be the chief legislative strategist...
...They faulted her for subtracting from their information rather than adding to it...
...Don't expect the spokes of the wheel to last...
...sure, Card has been a prominent GOP moderate going back to his days as a Massachusetts state legislator...
...Last summer, Kate O'Beirne, the Washington editor of National Review, arranged a dinner at the Oval Room restaurant near the White House where Hughes was introduced to conservative staffers on Capitol Hill, all women...
...Rove and Hughes may not, unless one of them becomes chief of staff...
...And if Rove is, Bush should be, too...
...And one of them is back again, Dick Cheney, who became Ford's chief of staff...
...One more thing about Cheney: The always reliable Thomas DeFrank of the New York Daily News reports it was not former President Bush but Cheney who advised George W. to recruit James Baker to run his legal operation during the Florida recount and court fights...
...After a few months, Ford realized he needed a more orderly process, which meant a chief of staff with a strong hand...
...so, to take this a step further, Bush isn't likely to deliver the centrist or center-left administration that Democrats and the media have been clamoring for...
...One reason Card will have no choice is Rove...
...The speechwriting, media relations, communications, and press offices will all come under her, and who knows what else...
...But reporters didn't do themselves any favor...
...ative-hater...
...By the way, Bush, who gives everyone a nickname, now refers to Cheney as "Big Time...
Vol. 6 • December 2000 • No. 15
