Bush Critics Tread Lightly

“On 9/11, when America was suffering a great deal,” Gary Bauer recently said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “there was dancing in Jenin and some other areas in the Middle East. The Israelis lowered their flag and declared a day of mourning. So, I think we need to keep in mind whose side we’re on, who stood with us.”

Surprisingly gentle words from a religious conservative unhappy with the Bush administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet his “soft” criticism highlights the delicate dance that Republicans must perform when they want to rebuke President Bush in the hope of influencing his policy choices.

All administrations want loyalty from party members. But by all accounts, the Bush administration is preoccupied with it. “They have a view of politics as warfare greater than other administrations,” said one Republican strategist. “So they don’t tolerate it at all when conservatives criticize them.”

“In this White House, if you criticize the president, the White House will put you on the list of ‘outsiders,’” said another prominent Republican.

Yet another GOP strategist said, “They’re terrible on this....[Bush political strategist Karl] Rove particularly--and the president, really. If you are perceived as crossing them, they’re very unpleasant....They’ve reached out more to liberals than to conservatives they feel have unduly debated with them.”

The Bush administration’s desire for party loyalty is comparable to that sought by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon, according to one political historian. It falls short, however, of the standard set by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who famously demanded that his staff be willing to kiss his posterior in Macy’s window at high noon and tell him it smelled like roses.

Still, Republican critics of Bush maintain that they are merely trying to keep the Bush administration in line with its stated principles and that they want to see him succeed, said Bauer.

“There is a role for a loving critic,” said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank. “It may be that you’re taken off the White House Christmas-card list, but that’s the price to be paid.”

So, how do you criticize a president sensitive about loyalty?

Carefully.

One approach is to praise the president first, then talk about what you wish he would do. “We’re talking about lovers’ quarrels,” said Wittmann, “so, if you’re going to be critical, you have to bring candy and flowers at the same time.” In other words, attack the policy, not the man.

This is the tack House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) adopted in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., last month. He said, “President Bush led boldly when he declared war against the forces of international terrorism.” Then he launched into a brief on what American policy toward Israel should be, in part motivated by the president’s endorsement of a Palestinian state and his remarks that Israel’s response to suicide bombings was “not helpful.” But DeLay subsequently mentioned the president only once, and not by name, in his embrace of Israel as an ally and symbol of freedom.

In his remarks at a recent pro-Israel solidarity rally held in Washington, conservative commentator William J. Bennett avoided even a single reference to the president while calling for the U.S. to let Israel be Israel. “If we let Israel fight her war, we will be the beneficiaries,” he said.

The other option is to criticize the president’s advisors for giving him poor guidance. “You never want to attack the emperor,” advises one Republican. “You want to attack those in his court.”

These days, that generally means U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who almost never mentions Bush by name when he disagrees with the president, regularly uses Powell as his straw man.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich prefers the first-person plural. “What we’re doing right now is trying to carry water on both shoulders,” he said recently in attacking Bush’s Middle East policy.

There’s a third way to influence the president without raising the loyalty question. Richard Norton Smith, director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, said, “You do it in private....Presidents, like the rest of us, don’t like to be told in public that they’re idiots.”

True, private counsel isn’t always heeded. “Does anyone believe that at the point of the [1964] Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Johnson would have listened to critics in private?” Smith asked.

But others disagree that private makes right. “There’s no cheap way to do it,” said one prominent Republican. “People in an administration want good press, so they tell people, ‘Give it to us privately, through back channels.’ That’s a lie. It’s the public criticism which shows you’re serious.”

Furthermore, for the administration, “being thin-skinned cuts both ways,” he said. “You get punished, but they also move toward you to shut you up.” And the person who moves them rarely gets any credit.

So, perhaps the best way for Republican elites to criticize and influence an administration sensitive to disapproval is to first go to its members privately and then make the disagreement public. Still, they shouldn’t expect any cards come Christmastime.