THE GRIFTERS :

My friends, there sits before you a broken man, a shattered man, an empty shell of a once proud pontificator, the desiccated husk of a formerly haughty know-it-all. For I have been duped in precisely the way I always attack others for being, have fallen like Robert Shaw in The Sting, like Chamberlain at Munich, like Newt for Clinton, like the Weekly Standard for McCain, like Marian the Librarian for Harold Hill... I, my friends, am a fool. I have no excuses to offer you, no justifications, no factors that mitigate against my credulousness. I just bought the story hook, line, and sinker. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa...

I refer, of course, to the recent interview that White House Chief of Staff Andy Card gave to Esquire. Here's how the NY Times characterized the story :

Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, is anguished over the announced departure of the presidential adviser Karen P. Hughes, saying she had been an essential counterweight to Karl Rove, a hard-charging and more ideological adviser, according to Esquire magazine.

In extensive remarks in the magazine's July issue, Mr. Card said Ms. Hughes's departure would deeply disrupt a tenuous balance of power among President Bush's closest associates. "Listen, the president's in a state of denial about what Karen's departure will mean, so is the first lady, and so is Karen herself," Mr. Card told Esquire.

"The whole balance of the place, the balance of what has worked up to now for George Bush, is gone, simply gone," he said. "My biggest concern? Want to know what it is? That the president will lose confidence in the White House staff. Because without her, we'll no longer be able to provide the president what he needs, what he demands."

Mr. Card's remarks are notable not only for what they reveal about the personal and ideological conflict within the senior White House staff, but also because so few Bush advisers have been willing to talk openly about internal matters in the highly disciplined Bush White House.

And, like a classic mark, I accepted this at face value. Like many others, I was eager to see this as one of those David Stockman moments, when the innards of the White House accidentally get splattered across the front page. I opined that this was the kind of disloyalty that the Bush's couldn't stand and that Mr. Card had likely just signed his own death warrant. What a gullible poltroon I am, having failed to apply all of the most basic techniques required in reading between the lines of a story.

First, when you read a story in which someone within an administration reveals something hush-hush about the administration the most important thing to keep in mind is what purpose is served by the revelation. Who benefits from a story that says that ultra-conservatives now control the White House and that the only thing standing between the Republic and the reactionaries led by Karl Rove is Andy Card? The answer is, of course, that three men are served well by the story : Karl Rove, Andy Card, and George W. Bush.

After all, what are the main problems on the President's plate right now. The war is taking care of itself. The major domestic initiatives all passed. The economy isn't exactly humming, but it's at least waddling along. All the President really has to deal with right now is getting through this Fall's budget negotiations with the Democrat Senate and quieting some inside-the-beltway unrest on his Right flank. To do the first he needs Andy Card, to be seen as The Man. To do the second he needs Karl Rove to be seen as The Man. Mr. Card's interview makes both appear to be the case.

Mr. Card will, after all, be the one who negotiates the final budget deals, not the President himself and certainly not Karl Rove, a mere political advisor. And what do Mr. Card's comments do?--they put him in a position to tell the Democrats : "Hey look, my offer's the best you're gonna get. Turn me down and you're dealing with the real whackos back at the White House." In one fell swoop, Andy Card has become the most important man in Washington, as far as Democrats are concerned. He's their Great White Hope.

Meanwhile, even as he stands at 70+% in the polls, Mr. Bush faces criticism from neoconservatives, libertarians, and the most doctrinaire of movement conservatives for not being enough of an ideologue, for compromising on school vouchers and free trade and for not attacking Iraq on September 10th. The voices being raised against him are few in number, but they are influential in Party circles and, particularly in the cases of Bill Kristol and Rush Limbaugh, they are loud. So a story that "reveals" the White House to being falling into the clutches of a gang of crypto-conservatives serves to counterbalance these complaints. Suddenly, Karl Rove is no mere consultant, he's the eminence grise who will work his wily ways and secure conservative victories, regardless of the moderate public face of the administration.

And what of President Bush? He's got King Karl to keep the red-meat Republicans quiet and he's got Andy to deal with the Democrats. All this strategy requires is that he be more interested in the bottom line than what goes on above the fold. If all three of these guys just want the administration to succeed, the interview is explicable, even savvy, and this seeming breech of what has otherwise been remarkable message discipline and loyalty among the senior staff can be seen as a remarkable instance of that discipline and loyalty as the three key players take a short term press hit that yields long term strategic gains. Of course, if Card really was freelancing, and was serious in what he said, then it's time for the Night of the Long Knives.

If the latter, I'll be sorry for Mr. Card as he's led to the woodshed, but it will assuage some of my embarrassment. If the former, I must learn to live with the fact that I bought this con like a blue state yokel purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge from a red state hustler. Mea culpa...mea culpa...mea maxima culpa....

UPDATE :
"WE JUST RUN THE PLAYS" :
Plan Was Formed in Utmost Secrecy : Final Proposal Came From 4 Top Bush Aides; Most Others Out of Loop (Dana Milbank, June 7, 2002, Washington Post)

Veterans of the Clinton administration expressed grudging admiration. Could this have been kept secret in the Clinton White House? "Quite honestly? Unlikely," said David Leavy, spokesman for the National Security Council under Clinton. "They have a very small loop in terms of top-line information, and that allows them to control news flow in a way you have to admire."

On [April 23], White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., Ridge, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. convened their working group to create the cabinet-level entity. They relied on a few other top aides, including Card deputies Joseph Hagin and Joshua Bolten. [...]

Even some of the most senior Bush aides, including counselor Karen P. Hughes, political strategist Karl Rove, Fleischer and speechwriter Michael Gerson, didn't join the process until last week, officials said. As of Wednesday, officials said, fewer than 20 aides had knowledge of the plan. [...]

[Deputy Communications Director Jim] Wilkinson said it was a triumph of the White House's no-leak strategy. "The president makes the news and calls the plays -- we just run the plays he calls," he said.

Note how Andy Card did the deal and Hughes and Rove didn't even know about it? Note how tightly the info was held? Note how massively the Esquire interview conflicts with the picture of White House operations?

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 8, 2002 10:16 AM