POLITICAL ELEGANCE
President Bush moved swiftly over the weekend to elevate his
nomination of Judge John Roberts from just a plain
old Supreme Court Justice to Chief Justice of the United States.
According to White House sources, the decision to move Roberts was
made for several reasons, not the least of which was that given the
other pressing political realities in Washington, a swap of
Rehnquist for Roberts was the easiest and even politically most
elegant thing to do under the circumstances.
“Ideologically, the two men are very similar. They are similar
in temperament, and style,” says the White House staffer. “And it
just felt right. Roberts is a man who served this Chief Justice
ably, and who became his friend. Rehnquist was pleased with his
initial nomination, and I’m sure he’s pleased with this change in
nomination.”
In terms of slotting ideological soul mate for similar soul
mate, the Roberts elevation makes it even more difficult for
Democrats to block this nomination, and it again opens up an
opportunity to bring balance to the Court after decades of liberal
imbalance.
The thinking among those in the know or almost-know is that the
Bush team is again looking at a list of potential nominees heavily
weighted toward conservatives, with a few women in the mix.
One name almost assuredly not on the list right now is Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales, particularly after his
remarks last week in which he seemed to give Democrats cover to
push the boundaries in questioning Roberts. Gonzales said he
believed it “appropriate” for the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask
Judge Roberts about his personal views on abortion.
That said, according to White House sources, there remains
interest in putting Gonzales on the court should the opportunity
arise, after satisfying the conservative base, to make yet another
“historic” nomination for Attorney General. “But the thinking there
is that those moves won’t happen for another year,” says an outside
adviser to the White House on such matters.
Right now, the name being strategically dropped in some White
House advisory circles is Judge Edith Jones.
Jones’s name took on increased traction late in the O’Connor search
process, and the thinking is that while she has an extensive paper
trail in the federal judicial system, she is not well known in
Washington circles.
Judge Edith Clement was believed to be the
White House’s first pick for the O’Connor seat. Her name is not
believed to be on the short-list, according to White House and
outside sources who have advised the White House in the past on
such matters. “That may be because she is known from the first
round of vetting,” says an outside source. “It may be because there
were issues that arose last time out. Given how this White House
operates, no one should read anything into it until the actual
announcement is made.”
FRISKED BY FRIST
Sen. Bill Frist rode to the rescue in more ways
than one last week, with his call for a comprehensive congressional
investigation into the failings of planning and execution of
preparing for Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing relief effort.
Frist’s efforts weren’t intended as a slam at President Bush,
who has taken a pummeling in the media from Democrats in Congress,
their operatives, and cooperative journalists who were willing to
set facts aside for the opportunity to create a political fire
storm around the Republican president.
Instead, Frist’s call for an investigation sent many Democrats
running for cover. “If you look at the history of appropriations
and funding of federal dollars, no delegation served their state
and major cities better than Louisiana,” says a Senate staffer. “In
the end, if the Democrats want to place blame, they know the
behavior of their party members, for a generation really the only
party in power in New Orleans and Louisiana, is damning, and they
don’t want to draw any more attention to the issue than the media
wants to.”
Senate Appropriations Committee staff late last week were
drawing up statistics on just where the hundreds of millions of
dollars set aside for New Orleans over the years, on everything
from community support, federal policing dollars, emergency
preparedness, and levy control and modernization.
“Let’s put it this way,” says an Appropriations staffer. “There
is a fair degree of certainty up here that dollars that should have
gone for projects and programs that might have been helpful in New
Orleans’ time of need was never used for those purposes. If I were
a local politician or a state or local bureaucrat down there, I’d
be nervous about now.”
Further lost in the aftermath of Katrina’s furor was the fact
that neither New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin nor
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco had wanted to order
a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, a city of 485,000 people.
Both politicians had been avoiding the issue until Saturday, August
27, when President Bush called both Democrats and, according to
congressional and White House sources, essentially demanded that a
mandatory evacuation be ordered. The order was made on the
28th.
At a news conference announcing the evacuation, Nagin also went
on the record predicting that the storm’s surge would top the
city’s protective levees, yet in the aftermath, Nagin was quick to
place blame for the levees on Washington.
“There is absolutely no question that federal support should
have been put into place sooner and that we were caught
flat-footed,” says a Homeland Security Department staffer. “But
when everything is said and done, nobody is going to want to be in
the way of the political fallout that comes from a thorough
investigation of what happened down there. And that includes
Democrats.”
By late Sunday, what had emerged was a picture less to do with
Washington, and far more to do with incompetence on the state and
local level. Federal emergency preparedness officials were poring
over Louisiana’s and New Orleans’ emergency plans. “There is a very
good reason everyone down there has clammed up about beating on the
President,” says the Homeland Security staffer. “The only people
who continue to do it are the likes of [Tim]
Russert and the New York Times, and they
are just feeding off the tragedy for political gain, nothing more.
In the end, it’s the very people they have been listening to for
the past week that they will have to put under a
microscope.”
