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"It's the exhaustion of power," said a veteran of conservative think tanks who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Ideology has confronted reality, and ideology has bent. On the domestic side, it has bent in terms of the expansion of the government embodied in the Medicare prescription-drug law. On the foreign policy side, it has bent because of what has transpired in the last few weeks in Fallujah" ...
Conservative policy experts and a number of former Bush administration officials say there are more systemic reasons for the policy sclerosis. For three years, the president pushed policies conceived during his 2000 campaign for the White House, but with most of those ideas either enacted or stalled, policymaking has run out of steam, they said.
Bush has also discouraged the sort of free-wheeling policy debates that characterized previous administrations, and he relies on a top-down management style that has little use for "wonks" in the federal bureaucracy. At the same time, many of the top domestic policy experts in the Bush White House have moved on to other jobs; in many cases they have been replaced by subordinates with much less experience in governing.
Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, said policy ideas typically bubble up from experts deep inside federal agencies, who put together working groups, draft white papers, sell their wares in the marketplace of ideas and hope White House officials act on their suggestions. In this case, ideas are hatched in the White House, for political or ideological reasons, then are thrust on the bureaucracy, "not for analysis, but for sale," Bartlett said.
Some attribute the policy lethargy to personnel changes, particularly on the domestic side. For example, three veterans of previous White Houses with lengthy experience in Washington have left their policymaking roles; their successors, though capable, have significantly less policymaking experience.
Joshua B. Bolten, the deputy chief of staff for policy, has been replaced by Harriet Miers, a Texas lawyer and former chairman of the Texas Lottery Commission. Jay Lefkowitz, director of the Domestic Policy Council, has been replaced by Kristen Silverberg, who was a young aide to Bolten. And Lawrence B. Lindsey was replaced as top economic adviser by investment banker Stephen Friedman.
Likewise, John Bridgeland, a former director of the Domestic Policy Council, was replaced as director of Bush's USA Freedom Corps initiative by Desiree Sayle, the former director of correspondence in the White House. And public-policy professor DiIulio was replaced as chief of Bush's "faith-based" initiative by Jim Towey, who had ties to the president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Leading experts in welfare and health policy have left the White House and been replaced by less experienced hands.
- Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman, "Conservatives Restive About Bush Policies: Fresh Initiatives Sought On Iraq, Domestic Issues," washington post May 10, 2004
posted May 10, 2004 in politics, print. 2005