Chavez’s Backfire

The withdrawal under pressure Tuesday of Linda Chavez, George W. Bush’s nominee for Labor secretary, is full circle to Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, two Clinton choices for attorney general in 1993 who were removed from consideration after disclosures that they had hired illegal workers to work in their homes. There are differences, of course, and chief among them is that--although it remains unclear whether the woman in Chavez’s case was actually an employee--Chavez should certainly have been more forthcoming during her vetting process. That the disclosures took President-elect Bush by surprise Sunday became a big part of the problem. The lack of disclosure also fed reports that she may have tried to hide or diminish the arrangement.

Senate Republicans’ silence after the disclosure doomed the Chavez nomination, just as a collapse of Democratic support for Baird and Wood did in their nominations in 1993.

If Chavez had fully described her relationship with Guatemalan immigrant Marta Mercado during her background investigation, it could have excluded her from consideration, in part because of the Labor Department’s special responsibility for worker protections.

She also took a hard line on the issue, most notably in a 1993 PBS interview that now haunts her with charges of hypocrisy. Chavez said: “I think most of the American people were upset during the Zoe Baird nomination that she had hired an illegal alien. That was what upset them more than the fact that she did not pay Social Security taxes.”

Chavez’s defense had been that her housing of Mercado was charity for a woman in trouble, not the employment of an undocumented immigrant. As one online political wag put it, is this the definition of compassionate conservatism, to bring illegal immigrants into your house, put them to work and then not pay them?

Chavez put a lot of energy into pointing morally superior fingers: Vice President Al Gore, for instance, had no business supporting campaign finance reform because of his own campaign finance record--”It’s the lying, stupid,” she said. And Bill Clinton, “liar in chief,” had during the Monica Lewinsky scandal “attacked the integrity and independence of the judicial system, and if he gets away with it, the separation of powers . . . fundamental to American democracy will be irreparably weakened.”

As she bowed out Tuesday, Chavez decried “a search-and-destroy mission” against her. It’s what comes of parties sowing the politics of personal destruction, and in the end, it’s a political nuclear arms race that no one can win.