Let’s talk turkey

EVERY THANKSGIVING Day, the president traditionally selects a turkey to be spared the butcher’s ax. Much the same thing happened in Colorado last week. President Bush paid a visit to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., to highlight his administration’s commitment to developing renewable energy sources. It was a wonderful idea for an event, except for the slight problem that his administration is not, in fact, committed to renewable energy sources. The lab had been slated for a significant drop in federal funding and had laid off 32 employees.

Rather than spoil a good photo opportunity, the White House hastily announced that it was shifting $5 million from unspecified sources in order to bring the 32 employees back to work. And so the turkey -- I mean the energy researchers -- was saved after all.

Unfortunately, this episode is entirely typical of how the Bush administration conducts domestic policy. The default mode for most government functions is total neglect. Except, every so often, a lucky program is plucked from obscurity and held up as a symbol of Bush’s devotion to some inspiring and high-minded goal, at which point it is showered with attention and money. Inevitably the fortunate program outlives its public relations utility and slides back into neglect and decay.

Bush’s interest in renewable energy seems to have come about as a result of his need to have a dramatic theme for his State of the Union address. Before that, he was not just uninterested but outright contemptuous of the idea. In 2000, when Al Gore proposed tax credits for people who purchased alternative energy sources, Bush used the concept as a punch line. “How many of you own hybrid electric-gasoline engine vehicles?” he would ask audiences to laughter. “How many of you own a rooftop photovoltaic system?”

The same dynamic drove Bush in January 2004 to dramatically embrace the goal of landing astronauts on Mars. Bush announced this goal with a soaring burst of Kennedy-esque rhetoric. “We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe ... and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own,” he said. “We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey.”

Or not. After this dramatic announcement, the administration learned that the Mars trip would be massively expensive and of dubious benefit, and the idea was greeted with skepticism by the GOP base, so it pretty much let the whole thing drop. Whatever. Mars wasn’t the point. The point was to give Bush something he could announce to lift our national spirits.

During his first couple of years in office, Bush made a point of announcing his support for doubling the budget for the National Institutes of Health. And the budget was doubled. But over the last couple of years, Bush has proposed steady cuts in the NIH budget, to the dismay of health researchers. Why jack up funding one year, then cut it the next? It’s simple: Doubling is a nice, round number that sounds great in a speech. Once you’ve done that, the program has served its basic purpose. After all, Bush is hardly likely to win applause for promising to keep the agency’s budget on pace with inflation.

Why, aside from rank cynicism, does Bush govern this way? One reason is that he’s famously averse to what he derisively calls “small ball.” Bush likes big, bold gestures that could ensure his place in history. Another is what former administration official John DiIulio called the “complete lack of a policy apparatus” in this administration. The wonks have almost no power, so Bush’s speechwriters and political advisors end up making policies on the basis of what plays well in the evening news.

Bill Clinton’s administration was frequently derided for its haphazard, dorm room approach to major speeches, which Clinton would often scribble out in the final hours and minutes. But Clinton was also meticulous about the policies themselves, which emerged only after long deliberation and study. Bush does things the other way around. Speeches are crafted with painstaking care; policies are an afterthought.

It’s not a very good system, unless you happen to be the lucky turkey.