<http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2002/021202_mfe_rove.html>
EX-BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TELLS ESQUIRE: NO SERIOUS CONSIDERATION GIVEN TO DOMESTIC POLICY IN WHITE HOUSE AT ALL
"It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis"
NEW YORK (December 2, 2002) In Pulitzer-Prize winning author Ron Suskind's second significant examination of the workings of the Bush White House for Esquire, respected former domestic policy adviser John DiIulio speaks out for the first time since leaving the White House. DiIulio, along with several current White House officials, offers a stunning appraisal of the administration, especially regarding the utter dominance of Karl Rove's political office on all domestic policy matters. Following are excerpts from Suskind's "Why Are These Men Laughing?" in the January 2003 Esquire:
* "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus," DiIulio tells Esquire. "What you've got is everything-and I mean everything-being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
* A current senior White House official: "Many of us feel it's our duty-our obligation as Americans-to get the word out that, certainly in domestic policy, there has been almost no meaningful consideration of any real issues. It's just kids on Big Wheels, who talk politics and know nothing. It's depressing. DPC [Domestic Policy Council] meetings are a farce."
* Senior White House official: "Don't you understand?ŠWe got into the White House and forfeited the game. You're supposed to stand for something . . . to generate sound ideas, support them with real evidence, and present them to Congress and the people. We didn't do any of that. We just danced this way and that on minute political calculations and whatever was needed for a few paragraphs of a speech."
* DiIulio: "Besides the tax cutŠ. the administration has not done much, either in absolute terms or in comparison to previous administrations at this stage, on domestic policy. There is a virtual absence as yet of any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded non-partisan, count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate conservatism."
* Another senior White House official: "The view of many people [in the White House] is that the best government can do is simply do no harm, that it never is an agent for positive change. If that's your position, why bother to understand what programs actually do?"
* DiIulio: "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 Office."
* DiIulio: "When policy analysis is just backfill, to back up a political maneuver, you'll get a lot of ooops."
Suskind's previous article on the Bush White House, for Esquire's July 2002 issue, "Mrs. Hughes Takes Her Leave," revealed an administration reeling from the departure of senior aide Karen Hughes and anticipating the ascendancy of Rove. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told Suskind at that time, "I'll need designees, people trusted by the president that I can elevate for various needs to balance against KarlŠ. But it won't be easy. Karl is a formidable adversary."
Suskind's new story takes a fresh look at the balance of power in the White House, six months after Hughes' departure. DiIulio's comments are rare, especially for this administration, because they are both critical and on the record. He was appointed in January 2001 to create the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which the president conceived as the cornerstone of "compassionate conservatism." At the time, President Bush called the University of Pennsylvania professor, author, and historian "one of the most influential social entrepreneurs in America."