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EDITORIAL
‘Compassionate conservativism’ just words
The curtain of “compassionate
conservatism” covering the Bush administration’s domestic policy was
just pulled back by the man who used to run it, John DiIulio, former director
of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
His informed conclusion: There’s nothing behind the flowery
rhetoric except politics.
DiIulio, a widely respected academic who left the administration
to return to the University of Pennsylvania in August 2001, gave a lengthy (a
3,500-word letter) description of the Bush administration domestic policy
apparatus to Esquire magazine.
Not since December 1981, when Reagan Budget Director David
Stockman revealed that “none of us really understands what’s going on
with all these numbers” has a Washington insider spilled the beans so
completely.
DiIulio offered a damning indictment:
- “There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the
West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were
even more overworked than the stereotypical, non-stop, 20-hour-a-day White
House staff.”
- “On social policy and related issues, the lack of even
basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was
somewhat breathtaking …” Senior policymakers were apparently unaware
of the difference between Medicaid, the federal/state partnership that provides
health coverage to the poor, and Medicare, the federally-funded insurance
program for the elderly, wrote DiIulio.
- Domestic policy was in the hands of “Mayberry
Machiavellis,” wrote DiIulio, staff members who “consistently talked
and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing
every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then
steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.
These folks have their predecessors in previous administrations … but, in
the Bush administration, they were particularly unfettered.”
- What might the administration have done to implement its
compassionate conservative agenda? “They could easily have gotten in
behind some proposals to implement existing Medicaid provisions that benefit
low-income children. They could have fashioned policies for the working poor.
The list is long. Long, and fairly complicated, especially when -- as they
stipulated from the start -- you want to spend little or no new public money on
social welfare, and you have no real process for doing meaningful domestic
policy analysis and deliberation.”
There was, said DiIulio, a lone exception to the adhocracy ruling
White House domestic decision-making: stem cell research. “I would have
favored a position closer to the Catholic church’s on the issue, but this
was one instance where the administration really took pains with both politics
and policy, invited real substantive knowledge into the process, and so
forth.”
DiIulio went into the administration with a plan. His research
showed that government funding of programs administered at the local level by
churches or “faith-based” groups -- organizations with credibility at
the neighborhood level -- could make a real difference in the lives of the
poor. DiIulio’s approach was well worth the effort, but it was sabotaged
by White House political operatives more interested in the points they could
score with the religious right than getting an inner-city teenager a job. What
a shame.
Soon after the Esquire magazine piece hit the streets,
DiIulio apologized to his former colleagues in the Bush administration and said
he would no longer be commenting on his days in the White House. It’s not
he who owes an apology.
Governing, whether making choices over funds for Medicare or
Medicaid, housing programs, welfare reform or education, is serious business.
It’s time the administration ridded itself of its “Mayberry
Machiavellis,” the Barney Fifes of the West Wing, and began to act like
the poor and the marginalized in this society deserve serious
consideration.
National Catholic Reporter, December 13,
2002
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