POLITICAL WRAP
December 29, 2000

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and The Weekly Standard editor David Brooks analyze the Bush Cabinet appointments.

 

Online Special: The Bush/Cheney Transition Dec. 28, 2000: Donald Rumsfeld to head the Pentagon Dec. 20, 2000: Bush nominates to Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development Dec. 18, 2000: Bush makes picks for Secretary of State, National Security Adviser and White House Counsel Election 2000     News for Students: The Bush/ Cheney Transition.   The Official Bush/Cheney Transition Site	MARGARET WARNER: For analysis of the week's political developments, we turn to Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and Weekly Standard editor David Brooks. Paul Gigot is on vacation. So, David, what do you make of these new cabinet picks? Do you see any kind of common thread or theme here?
	A common thread in cabinet picks?
	DAVID BROOKS: I'd say not so much in what they think but how they think. Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey came out of the intellectual wing of the party seeing politics as a war of ideas. These people come out of the pragmatist wing, they come out of the corporate world or managing large organizations so they see politics as a competition of interests, and they're much more interested in finding a process -- they're very process oriented people -- to get what they call a win-win situation. So they're very good at striking deals and the good thing about these people is they're good at organizing things, it seems to me and good and also very good at finding the center and actually getting something done. The problem with pragmatists in the past and Chesteron said the problem with pragmatism is it never works, is that they tend to lose track of the big picture and sometimes get out of touch with the people who elected them, which is what happened in the first Bush administration. MARGARET WARNER: How do you see it. MARK SHIELDS: I think David's premise is a valid one. I'd just say that Tommy Thompson, if he is a pragmatist, he is the longest serving governor not only in the country - he's the longest serving governor in the history of Wisconsin. He has never forgotten why he went into it - and he's certainly as a pragmatist and he has had to be a pragmatist in a state that has trended Democrat, has two Democratic Senators and a strong progressive tradition. He has certainly been interested in ends. I always thought that Tommy Thompson who really wanted to run for President in 2000, had the resume George Bush wanted. I mean George Bush had name, base, establishment support, charisma, money. And Tommy Thompson had a record of performance of over a generation that George Bush couldn't begin to approach. If you married the two, it would have been an enormously formidable candidacy. If he is represented with the pragmatism that Bush is committed to, I think it is a pretty good sign for the Republican Party.
	Rumsfeld and the Ford administration
	MARGARET WARNER: A lot was being made, there was a piece in the Washington Post - I think it was today or yesterday -- and they were including Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary and of course Dick Cheney -- is the fact that a lot of these were old Gerald Ford hands. Do you think that was significant? DAVID BROOKS: They were part of the idealistic generation that surged into Washington to serve in the Ford administration. They've had parallel careers, it really is remarkable. They started out as bright young men in the Ford administration. Then they went into business. MARGARET WARNER: From the wreckage of Nixon and Watergate. DAVID BROOKS: Right. And they were the ones who survived, the ones with integrity, and then they went into the business and it was really the business experience which seems to be so valuable. And the question is how much were they changed by Reagan? How much were they made more conservative more populist, less sort of the old Republican Party? And in Don Rumsfeld's case, I think there was a clear transformation, in Cheney's maybe -- more conservative and more conviction driven. And this may parallel the difference between George Bush the elder and George Bush the younger that the Reagan revolution really transformed these people who would have been moderate Northeastern Republicans. MARK SHIELDS: Don Rumsfeld is a fascinating case. I mean, he came in 1969 to OEO, having been on Capitol Hill. MARGARET WARNER: Office of Economic Opportunity. MARK SHIELDS: The war on poverty. From that group came Christie Whitman, came Bill Bradley - from senator of New Jersey -- came Frank Carlucci, came Mickey Kantor who became Bill Clinton's Secretary of Commerce and United States Trade Representative. You know, as Michener said about the congregations in Hawaii, they came to do good and did very well and most of them have done very, very well politically in public service and the private sector. Don Rumsfeld, speaking of Reagan, in 1975 as chief of staff to Jerry Ford, had the assignment to go to Ronald Reagan to try and head off a challenge to Jerry Ford for the nomination in 1976, and his mandate was to offer Reagan the Secretary of Commerce's job. And Reagan turned it down. And one of Reagan's closest advisors said to me. We just prayed that he would not offer him the court of St. James, the ambassador of Great Britain because Nancy Reagan would have insisted he take it and Jerry Ford would have been reelected. I think he is a conservative but he is a fellow who has worked with Democrats. That's one of the real differences. Tommy Thompson, Don Rumsfeld - I mean, Don Rumsfeld in private and public life has worked with Democrats. He hasn't demonized the opposition. MARGARET WARNER: Yet, conservatives have a great deal to be pleased about, too in this group, don't they? DAVID BROOKS: In Don Rumsfeld, you've got a guy who has really championed missile defense and who goes into the Pentagon knowing the Pentagon, like the Jack Welsh of the Pentagon -- he can say we're going to clean out this and we're going to support missile defense. They'll call him Neutron Don in a couple of years. And in Tommy Thompson, you've got the guy who has been the leader in conservative reform efforts who really sees himself as the successor to the Wisconsin progressive tradition, but on the conservative side. MARGARET WARNER: And he is anti-abortion as is the new attorney general. So in the jobs that have some influence on that policy, social conservatives got what they wanted. MARK SHIELDS: Governor Bush has been consistent to his own platform, his own positions and has certainly invited pro-choice folks into the cabinet into positions like Gale Norton and Christie Whitman where they won't be directly involved with the policy, I don't think.
	The environment and cabinet diversity
	MARGARET WARNER: Now, who should be upset or happy in terms of environmental policy if you look at the combination of Gale Norton and Christie Todd Whitman? DAVID BROOKS: Usually when the Republicans announce an environmental team, the environmental groups go ballistic and send out fund-raising letters. This time they are having a little trouble doing it I think because of Christie Todd Whitman. The Sierra Club said her record in New Jersey was mixed, so that she was very strong in land acquisition and very strong in marine life from their point of view, so I think they're not - MARGARET WARNER: Marine life? DAVID BROOKS: Protecting crabs for people who care. (laughter) And the one crucial issue will be this land use. Republicans, especially in the West, are extremely upset about the way Babbitt and the Clinton administration appropriated four million acres. And so the mantra of the Bush team seems to be (a) flexibility and (b) local control. And that plays into Gale Norton's strength. MARGARET WARNER: Do you think we're going to see a big shift in policy in that area? MARK SHIELDS: I don't think there is any question that Bruce Babbitt has been an activist Secretary of the Interior and has represented his point of view and constituency quite well. I think with Gale Norton what you are bringing in is not someone like Babbitt who has been a presidential candidate, and a governor in his own right, but you're bringing in somebody who doesn't have a national constituency. And for that reason, unlike Christie Whitman or unlike Colin Powell -- if Colin Powell got upset or miffed with George Bush and left, it would be a big story. If for any reason things don't work out with Gale Norton, unlike choosing Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who is one of the people under consideration, or even Slade Gorton, the former Senator from Washington, it would not be a big story if there was a policy difference which resulted in Gale Norton not being a part of the administration. I think she will be carrying out policy more than making it. MARGARET WARNER: I noticed today when he introduced Tommy Thompson and Rod Paige, the Education Secretary, he described them each in terms that were taken directly from his campaign themes. He said Rod Paige was a reformer with results, Tommy Thompson was a compassionate conservative Governor and Rumsfeld of course was missile defense. Do you think I'm reading or we're reading too much into it to say he really did pick people in the specific jobs who quite naturally have... are in true agreement with him on his key campaign promises? DAVID BROOKS: Bush is a guy who picks four things and come rain or shine, he sticks with them. And on education, the big theme was accountability. You go on the Web site of the Houston Independent School District which Rod Paige runs, and you can get the test scores of each school, you can find out which school is doing well at which grade -- which is not. There's an incredible amount of information being sent out there. Paige has boasted about how they can go and there is a problem in sixth grade math here, will send in a team. This is what Bush talked about and what he really values, so while the vouchers and the charter schools are sort of hot button issues, it is this business-like believability for schools that is deep in Bush's heart and clearly deep in Paige's too. MARK SHIELDS: I think what you're seeing in fairness to Governor Bush, President-elect Bush, is that this, that four years ago the Republican Party was all about abolishing the Department of Education. That was their answer to every problem with education in the country. I mean, you went to any Republican rally or any Republican event, abolish the Department of Education. It got applause and it took the argument nowhere. George Bush, I think with the appointment of Secretary Paige and the... or the nomination of Secretary Paige, continues to show some interest in this. Plus he is assembling a cabinet, dare I say, that looks a lot like America and that Bill Clinton was skewered by my good conservative friends in 1992 for putting together a class picture rather than a cabinet with - you know -- women and African Americans and Latinos and all the rest of it, but boy this is certainly starting to look like America's demographic, the salad bowl of America. MARGARET WARNER: That's right. Three women so far. MARK SHIELDS: Three women -- a Cuban American Cuban born. MARGARET WARNER: Two African Americans. MARK SHIELDS: Two African Americans -- a Hispanic in the -- as the White House counsel. I mean it's really shaping up. DAVID BROOKS: But it's heavily corporate. Corporate mentality. Condoleezza Rice has an oil tanker named after her from Chevron. They look good in golf spikes. It is the mentality that we are going to manage this thing, it's a McKinsey group - we're coming in to manage this country -- we are not going to.... MARGARET WARNER: A lot of them ran corporation, connections. MARK SHIELDS: The three big ones, let's be blunt about it, the three big departments -- Treasury, very corporate, State Department- MARGARET WARNER: Paul O'Neill. MARK SHIELDS: Paul O'Neill. Defense, I mean, Don Rumsfeld, Searle and all the rest of his corporate career. And I think Colin Powell is the icon before which a large part of corporate America genuflects.
	Clinton's appointment
	MARGARET WARNER: Before we go, President Clinton did something interesting this week. He made a recess appointment of an African American lawyer from Virginia to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has never had a black as a justice. We've already got one Republican Senator, Inhoffe of Oklahoma, saying this is outrageous. He is going to fight it. Where do you think that's going? What are the politics of this? MARK SHIELDS: Well, the politics of it - I mean, the Republicans are angry at Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is angry at the fact that there has never been consideration, that there has been a hold in this Fourth Circuit applied to anybody who was an African American. MARGARET WARNER: Even though there are four or five vacancies. MARK SHIELDS: Four or five vacancies, and it is the one circuit with the largest percentage of African Americans of any in the country and the only one without an African American sitting. But you know, I tried to check this afternoon. I tried 11 offices on Capitol Hill. I didn't get anybody to answer on this. I don't.... MARGARET WARNER: Did you get anyone to answer the phone? MARK SHIELDS: No. I mean, all I got was a recorded messages wishing me a happy New Year. I'll be very blunt. I don't know what is going to happen but it is going to be fascinating to see if anything is negotiated in the 17 days the Democrats control the Senate - from the 3rd to the 20th of January. DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. I'd say this is possibly the first salvo in the world with John Ashcroft. Ashcroft is famous for opposing a black judge, Ronnie White and Clinton is saying here I am promoting a black judge. You draw the distinction. There's the first recess appointment in 20 years, you know, Clinton has had plenty of recesses before, it didn't occur to do it until this one. It is sort of the first salvo in what will be clearly the most heated confirmation hearings. MARK SHIELDS: In fairness to Bill Clinton, it's the kind of thing you have to do on the way out because if you do it while you're still hoping to get something out of the next Congress, it's well nye impossible to do that because Congress would rise up in anger and fury. MARGARET WARNER: All right. And now we're going to end this and wish you a happy New Year.