The sparks flew at the White House last week as President Bush’s new chief of staff, Josh Bolten, demoted Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, fired Press Secretary Scott McClellan, and generally made noise about re-energizing a regime that seems on its last legs. It seemed as if the White House finally realized its problems were not only real — rather than inventions of a hostile press, as some of its defenders say — but also deep-seated.
But the reshuffling shows nothing of the sort. What it really means is that, as usual, the administration is more committed to appearances than to ideas, and that it is more concerned with convincing the public that it follows a popular mandate than actually following one.
The decision to replace Rove and McClellan has the virtue of seeming dramatic. Indeed, those are the most public faces of the administration (beside the president). But they are not the most embattled — those are Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who is under bipartisan criticism for incompetence of all sorts) and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (who has made absurdly tautological justifications for his clearly illegal domestic surveillance program).
Dan Bartlett, the administration’s point man on communications, essentially admitted the moves were designed more to create the appearance of change than actually to change anything. He told The Washington Post, “The decision isn’t one looking back at past performance or judgment. It was one looking forward. Josh is re-energizing and rebuilding his staff for the next thousand days.”But high-profile job assignments without high-profile policy changes won’t reverse the flubs that have prematurely ended Bush’s second term.
They won’t reverse the perception that Dick Cheney has too free a hand (displayed, for example, by his daylong silence about accidentally shooting a hunting partner). They won’t reverse the prescription-drug bill’s messy application or its manifold pharmaceutical giveaways. They won’t reverse the cronyism that has governed past appointments and nominations, such as former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown or Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. They won’t reverse the radical unpopularity of Social Security privatization, which this administration made the first priority of its second term. They won’t reverse the taint of scandal brought by Scooter Libby’s indictment for perjury — a charge that he has borne, many people think, to take the fall for Bush and Cheney. They won’t reverse the way Bush simply trampled a privacy law it didn’t like, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They won’t reverse the fact that Bush has stood up neither to right nor the left on immigration. They won’t reverse the White House’s sudden inability to corral Republican congressmen for its initiatives, as they try to distance themselves from a faltering presidency. And, most of all, high-profile job assignments won’t reverse the war, and the growing resentment Americans feel about sacrificing blood and treasure for Iraq.
The most successful reshufflings have been the ones that also brought a change in policy. Clark Clifford comes to mind. Lyndon Johnson brought in Clifford to replace Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1968, and Clifford was given a free hand to develop Vietnam policy. In doing so, he came to the conclusion that the war was unwinnable, and he was able to pull Johnson back from the edge. The analogy isn’t perfect — I don’t think troop withdrawal, for instance, would rescue this presidency — but the lesson is fairly clear: Symbolic gestures don’t absolve presidents of real errors.
Adam B. Kushner is assistant managing editor of The New Republic.
