THOMAS M. DEFRANK, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Daily News, would seem to be perfectly qualified to be the chief spokesman for the Defense Department. He is a Texan who’s known President Bush for years. He has 22 years of military experience, including two as an Army second lieutenant working in the Pentagon office of public affairs. He’s also served in the Army public affairs shop. DeFrank knows defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld well. In 1975, he spent two weeks of active duty on Rumsfeld’s staff during Rumsfeld’s earlier stint as defense secretary. And that was at Rumsfeld’s specific request. He knows the military culture that dominates the Pentagon. And he frequently writes about military affairs.
Yet DeFrank, strongly favored by some at the Pentagon for the spokesman’s job, was passed over. Instead, the White House announced last week that Victoria Clarke, a Washington public relations executive with no experience in military affairs, was the nominee for the post. Clarke was selected to comply with the White House’s insistence on women or minorities in high positions. Among her champions was Karen Hughes, President Bush’s communications director and the person in charge of picking spokesmen, or spokeswomen, for cabinet agencies.
There’s more to it than a successful power play by Hughes. Clarke is part of a phalanx of women who have gained top positions in the Bush administration. Clay Johnson, the White House personnel director and a longtime friend of Bush, says no quotas or even rough goals come into play in choosing appointees. “Even if you were inclined to set a goal, I don’t know what the goal would be,” Johnson says. Still, there’s been talk inside and outside the administration about having no more than half the 484 political positions in the cabinet and agencies go to white males and at least 30 percent to women. As luck would have it, about 30 percent of the president’s picks so far have been women and about 50 percent white males.
There have been some private complaints by white males. One sent a letter to the White House saying he never expected a Republican Bush administration to treat white males so shabbily. Another was unhappy when he lost a job at the White House to a holdover from the Clinton administration. Still, Johnson insists no woman or minority has been chosen over a more qualified white male. Even in the case of ties, the job doesn’t automatically go to women or minorities. “All we’re paying attention to is the quality of the people,” Johnson says.
Well, not quite. The White House is seeking diversity, according to Johnson. If all the appointees have similar profiles, “there’s less energy, there’s less vitality, there’s less critical thinking,” he says. “A variety of thinking, a variety of viewpoints, a variety of backgrounds is a good idea.” A number of factors in choosing Bush officials are used to assure sufficient diversity, including educational background, home state, gender, ethnicity — virtually the same criteria as the infamous EGG guidelines (ethnicity, gender, geography) of the Clinton administration. The White House, Johnson says, has made sure that the administration isn’t overloaded with Texans. “This is the United States of America. This isn’t the United States of Texas. We are sensitive to that.” Nine percent of Bush’s nominees so far are from Texas.
As governor of Texas, Bush also sought diversity. At one point, Bush asked why there weren’t any top officials in his administration from Texarkana in the northeast corner of the state, Johnson says. Johnson, Bush’s roommate at Yale, was personnel director for the governor’s office in Austin. There, Johnson told a conference at the Brookings Institution recently, 52 percent to 53 percent of Bush’s appointees were not white males and 35 percent were women. “We got a good grade for diversity,” Johnson says.
The political impact of Bush’s pattern of appointments is probably positive. At least Bush’s aides think so. In the 2000 election, Al Gore defeated Bush among women by 11 percentage points (Bush won men by 11 percentage points). And Bush would like to improve his support among female voters, notably those in the suburbs. One way is to install women in highly visible positions. And one place where women are especially prominent is public affairs jobs, speaking on behalf of cabinet secretaries. At two of the most prestigious departments, women run the public affairs shops — Mindy Tucker at Justice, Michelle Davis at Treasury.
At the White House, 8 of the 18 participants in the daily senior staff meeting are women, undoubtedly a record. Karen Hughes, one of Bush’s most trusted advisers, oversees the speechwriting staff. Condoleezza Rice is the first woman to serve as national security adviser. Mary Matalin is Vice President Cheney’s top political aide. Despite the ascendancy of women, the Bush administration has gotten zero credit from feminist groups. “Are you kidding?” Matalin says, arguing that these groups cheer only if pro-choice liberal women gain senior positions.
But there is a political downside. Bush, like most Republicans, says he rejects quotas and preferences. But he has adopted the fallback position — diversity — of those who do support setting aside jobs or promotions or other benefits for women and minorities. Colleges such as the University of Michigan give preference in admission to minorities, citing the need for diversity in the student body. They claim they don’t use quotas, but the results are similar. This — quotas by another name — may be true in the Bush administration as well, making Bush look like a hypocrite.
Many of Bush’s female nominees are both experienced and talented. Victoria Clarke was press secretary to Senator John McCain, worked with Matalin in the 1992 reelection campaign of the first President Bush, ran PR for the National Cable Television Association, and more recently has headed the Washington office of Hill and Knowlton, the respected public relations firm. No doubt she’s qualified to be spokeswoman for many federal agencies. The problem is the Defense Department may not be one of them.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
