Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

In its October 19, 2002, issue, the conservative British newsmagazine The Economist wrote
that "Mr. Bush is as partisan a president as America has ever had." That includes George
Washington, whom the British have little reason to love.
A window into just how exclusively political the thinking is at the Bush White House
was opened by University of Pennsylvania professor John DiIulio, whom the President had
appointed to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. DiIulio
quit the office in February of 2002 after only one of its initiatives, the Faith-Based Bureau of
Weights and Measures, came to fruition. (The FBBWM had some success in reintroducing
the cubit by requiring that the biblical unit of measurement be used in plans for new federal
buildings.)
Dilulio stupidly wrote a seven-page letter to Esquire's Ron Suskind to provide background
for Suskind's article on Karl Rove's role as senior advisor in the Bush White House.
"There is no prece dent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete
lack of a policy apparatus," DiIulio admitted in the soon-to-be-much-regretted letter.
"What you got is everything—and I mean everything—run by the political arm. It's the reign
of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
DiIulio contrasted the Bush White House with Clinton's, where "every domestic [issue]
drew multiple policy analyses that certainly weighted politics, media messages, legislative
strategy, et cetera, but also strongly weighted policy-relevant information, stimulated
substantive policy debate, and put a premium on policy knowledge. That is simply not Bush's
style."
Several paragraphs later, DiIulio gave what might very well be the key to the Bush
administration's startling lack of accomplishment in the domestic sphere other than budgetbusting,
deficit bloating tax cuts. "On social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic
policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking."
According to Dilulio, Bush's staff "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."
Of Rove, Dilulio said, "Karl is enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful
person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political advisor post near the Oval