Left Margin : BUSH’S ENTOURAGE

By Carl Bloice

My good friend - who’s usually right about such things -
insists that in this case what is apparent is probably real.
The Bush Administration really did appoint Karen Hughes to
conduct a campaign to improve the image of our country in the
Islamic world. There is no hidden agenda. She’s supposed to
go around publicly holding court in places like Saudi Arabia
and Turkey, ’listening’ and saying good things about the good
people back here at home. Hughes is not carrying secret
messages. The President and the brain surgeons around him
really thought the plan would work. The neo-cons had
certainly made a mess of things and now that they have been
pretty much stuffed back into the closet, the White House
sent a straight-talking Texas conservative to set things
right with regard to our reputation. Even though her first
foray into the Middle East - she has never been there before
and doesn’t speak the languages - was somewhat farcical, they
will stay the course. Never mind that she walked into a set-
up in Jeddah, and upon arriving in Istanbul, got slapped in
the face by the reality of what the war in Iraq has done to
the U.S. image abroad. This is not high level strategic
plotting, says my friend, this is the level at which this
administration actually operates.

I still don’t believe it.

Think about it. Everything this administration does is
suspicious. At a moment when the floodwaters of corruption
are lapping at the ankles of key present and past officials
of the Administration and the Republican Party, who does the
President appoint to the Supreme Court? His lawyer.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. sort of snuck up
on the possible real meaning of the appointment of Harriet
Miers to the Supreme Court. ’What’s odd is that even at the
level of tough, practical politics — the arena in which Bush
and his senior lieutenant Karl Rove have excelled until
recently — this choice may open doors that the president
would prefer to hold shut,’ he wrote October 4. "At the very
moment Bush is battling charges of cronyism, Bush has sought
an appointee from about as deep inside his inner circle as he
could go. No one will miss the fact that, back in 1998, it
was Miers who was responsible for looking into Bush’s Vietnam
era draft record to prepare for damage control."

Nor are many people going to forget that it was the Supreme
Court that saved his reign in the 2004 Florida vote recount.

In an October 3 posting on the American Prospect website,
Michael Tomasky asked whether in light of recent revelations
isn’t it fair to say that "This week felt like a tug on the
noose around the White House’s neck?" He was referring to
developments in the case of the outing of CIA agent Valerie
Plame and noted the possibility that both Rove and Cheney
aide I. Lewis ’Scooter’ Libby might face indictments.
Further, George Stephanopoulos had told an ABC-TV audience
that a source told him that Bush and Vice-President Dick
Cheney "were actually involved in some of the discussions"
about how the White House should deal with Plame’s husband
Joe Wilson after he blew the whistle on the phony claim that
Saddam Hussein was buying up uranium in Africa for building
nukes.

As if Rove and Liddy’s (and possibly Bush and Cheney’s)
possible incrimination in the Plame affair were not enough,
Tom Delay has had to step aside from his post as party leader
in the House of Representative after being indicted in Texas
on conspiracy and money laundering charges. And the
Republican leader on the Senate side is being investigated
for a suspicious stock sale involving a lot more moola than
Martha Stewart went to jail for. Meanwhile, a good buddy of
Delay’s, Jack Abramoff, is being looked at for a number of
alleged illegalities involving shady casino dealings and
influence peddling. That’s not to mention the controversy
stirred up by the handling of Hurricane Katrina, the cronyism
that contributed to the horror and the involvement of big
money friends like the folks at Halliburton.

In situations like this it would pay to have good friends in
high places - such as the Supreme Court.

The Republican Right is up in arms over the Mier nomination -
as well they might be. Bush has done an end run around them.
They expected him to pick one of their own who would shift
the court squarely to the right, but it appears he had bigger
– or at least, other - fish to fry. Trust me, he told the
whimpering rightwingers; she’s good. Then, with a straight
face he told an October 4 press conference that despite being
tight with Mier for many years he doesn’t really know what
she thinks about abortion.

Far Rightist Patrick Buchanan says he is depressed, not by
what the court selection says about Mier, "but what it tells
us of the president who appointed her." Bush, he wrote, has
"capitulated to the diversity-mongers, used a critical
Supreme Court seat to reward a crony and revealed that he
lacks the desire to engage the Senate in fierce combat to
carry out his now-suspect commitment to remake the court in
the image of Scalia and Thomas."

"In picking her, Bush ran from a fight. The conservative
movement has been had — and not for the first time by a
president by the name of Bush," declared Buchanan.

Good Lord, the political movement that attained power in
Washington six years ago that is perhaps the most ideological
and theocratically-driven one in the nation’s history is now
battling an emerging image of one of the most corrupt in
decades. What happened? "Conservative activists came to
Washington to do good and stayed to do well," Andrew Ferguson
wrote in The Weekly Standard in August. "They commandeered
the greasy machinery of Washington power" and "The grease
rubbed off, too."

Ferguson’s observation is a compelling one. I, too, have,
over the years, been amazed at how often politicians - not
just on the right, mind you - come to power with good
intentions, high principles and seeming zeal but just can’t
resist dipping into the till. But in this case, it may not be
a sufficient explanation. This time the roots may be more
prosaic. In a manner befitting the HBO series "Entourage," a
group - not half as young or handsome - appears to have shown
up in the capitol from Texas and fallen right into the spirit
of things. What makes them so intriguing is their naiveté.
How else do you explain putting your lawyer on the Supreme
Court and summoning an old hand from Austin back to repair an
image that your policies and actions have shredded? You gotta
hand it to them.

[Carl Bloice is a freelance writer in San Francisco,
California]

published by Portside