Not So Bosom Buddies
Despite Tom DeLay’s loyalty to the White House, the indicted House majority leader has never had the president’s unwavering support. Plus, Bush’s cardigan-sweater moment.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey
Newsweek
Updated: 7:24 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2005
Sept. 28, 2005 - Just hours after Hurricane Rita moved ashore on the Texas Gulf Coast last Saturday, President George W. Bush was three stories below the ground in Austin, meeting in an emergency bunker with state officials about the storm’s impact on his home state. In the room was Bush’s successor, Gov. Rick Perry, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and three members of the state’s congressional delegation: Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose district had been skirted by Rita. For more than an hour, the group met, assessing federal response and hearing updates on Rita’s impact on the state’s oil and gas industry. Bush sat at the center of the conference-room table, flanked by Perry and the two senators while DeLay sat in a chair along the wall, next to White House staff.
After the meeting, Bush emerged to address the more than 100 emergency workers in the operations center in what was supposed to be a carefully orchestrated photo op to show the president’s leadership in the wake of a second devastating hurricane. Yet while the other lawmakers hung back to allow Bush his time before the cameras, DeLay positioned himself front and center next to the president. He stood just inches away from Bush’s left elbow, a position that landed him in every photo taken of the commander in chief that afternoon. As Bush spoke, DeLay smiled, especially when Bush thanked him personally for being on the scene. It was a made-for-campaigns moment.
For a lawmaker who has been so crucial to Bush’s legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, DeLay hasn’t enjoyed many of these moments with the president. Bush has never campaigned for DeLay, who is one of the few Texas politicians in Washington the president doesn’t socialize with. As a result, DeLay’s indictment is unlikely to upset many White House officials. Bush’s aides offered only tepid support for the majority leader earlier this year, as speculation swirled about his demise. When pushed on the nature of DeLay’s friendship with the president, Bush’s aides like to say they aren’t close. Instead they stress how effective DeLay has been as part of Team Bush. Those terms were repeated Wednesday as the White House responded to DeLay’s indictment. “Congressman DeLay is a good ally, a leader who we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people,” said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
Like so many lackluster expressions of support by the White House, the effort to be there for DeLay is remarkable for what’s left unsaid. Nowhere did the president’s aides express anything like the partisan attacks that DeLay himself unleashed on his nemesis in Austin, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle. DeLay hurled insults at Earle on Capitol Hill, saying he was a partisan zealot and fanatic. But Earle has been more than happy to return those compliments before, quipping last year: “Being called partisan and vindictive by Tom DeLay is like being called ugly by a frog.”
The White House has little to gain from jumping into the sewer with DeLay, even if it has gained handsomely from DeLay’s work in the past. Bush’s aides like to cite DeLay’s effectiveness as a leader, suggesting their warm feelings will disappear as soon as he becomes ineffective. What does the White House mean by effective? At the top of the list is his extraordinary arm-twisting to win GOP votes to add the costly prescription-drugs benefit to Medicare in 2003, a vote that still sharply divides the GOP in Congress.
When Bush traveled in April with DeLay to Galveston, close to DeLay’s home district, there was little warmth—at least from the president. Bush devoted all of 18 words to praising DeLay in front of an enthusiastic GOP crowd, saying, “I appreciate the leadership of Congressman Tom DeLay in working on important issues that matter to the country.” In contrast, members of the audience were far more emotional. Before Bush walked on stage, they cheered DeLay and shouted how much they loved him.
That unequal relationship with the Bush White House was evident throughout the day. DeLay flew on Air Force One back to Washington with the president, but Bush declined to make any further statements of support except for a slap on the back on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base. Even DeLay acknowledged how much more support he got from the Galveston crowd than the president. “It felt pretty good,” he told reporters. “The strong show of support from the people of Houston, as well as the president—we feel very humbled by the fact of that kind of support.”
Yet those cheers, while welcome for DeLay, don’t tell the full story of his district. DeLay won re-election last year with 55 percent of the vote—a useful majority but well down from his 2002 vote of 63 percent and far less than his high point of 74 percent in 1994. While DeLay is hardly vulnerable, he’s not untouchable either. It’s that cracking of the image of power that is harmful, and remains the most immediate challenge to another two Washington power brokers who have their own grand jury troubles: uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and presidential strategist Karl Rove.
In contrast to Bush and DeLay’s cold partnership, Rep. David Dreier, the California Republican who will partly fill DeLay’s shoes, has close ties to the White House. Bush and Dreier have been friends since they met during a political event in 1978 when both ran failed campaigns for Congress. Last month, Bush made a rare visit to California, where he held a Medicare forum in Dreier’s district. Bush heaped so much praise on Dreier (he said he “cares a lot about a lot of issues”) that he even managed to land this joke: “I'm traveling in good company—I'm not talking about Dreier at this point—I'm talking about my wife, the First Lady.” That’s the kind of good-natured backhanded presidential introduction that Tom DeLay can only dream of.
At the start of the year, as the GOP basked in talk of the political realignment of 2004, it looked like the party and the Bush administration might be able to dodge the typical woes of an old majority in Congress and second-term blues in the White House. Just nine months later, the debate in Washington sounds much like the one that plagued Democrats in the 1990s—of corruption and ethical scandals, of pork-barrel spending and cronyism, and a political hierarchy more interested in power than political realities. According to the most recent NEWSWEEK poll, congressional Republicans would get just 38 percent of votes compared to 50 for Democrats if the midterm elections were held now. Even before DeLay’s indictment, the political dynamic of last year’s elections seemed just a distant memory.
The conservationist in chief
For the second time in less than a month, President Bush this week urged Americans to save gasoline by driving less. While Bush’s order lacked the urgency of the dire energy warnings of the late 1970s, it was perhaps the closest this former oilman has ever come to slipping into Jimmy Carter’s cardigan sweater, a clothing item made famous when the former president went before a TV audience in 1977 to persuade Americans to turn down their thermostats in the name of conservation.
Indeed, Bush has made most of these same energy-saving directives before. Back in 2001, just months into his first term at the White House, Bush responded to the rolling blackouts in California and warnings of a nationwide energy shortage by directing the federal government to turn off the lights, reduce the use of air conditioning and curb nonessential travel, among other things. He also advised federal employees to take the bus, when possible, and to carpool—all suggestions that Bush made again this week in the wake of two hurricanes that have disrupted energy production off the Gulf Coast.
What has changed is Bush’s emphasis on conservation. While administration officials insist that energy efficiency has long been a priority for the White House, it was hardly a front-burner issue back in 2001 when Vice President Dick Cheney was drawing up the administration’s comprehensive energy policy. In May 2001, Cheney dismissed conservation as simply a “personal virtue” with no basis in sound public policy. “As if we could simply conserve or ration our way out of the situation we’re in,” Cheney said of efforts to force Americans to reduce energy consumption. A few days later, Bush echoed Cheney’s comments, telling reporters, “You cannot conserve your way to energy independence.” Indeed, Bush has repeatedly urged Americans to go about their lives and follow normal consumption patterns, even as oil and gas prices have skyrocketed in the wake of other disasters like the 9/11 terrorist attacks and last summer’s deadly hurricanes.
For the most part, White House officials still regard conservation as more of a short-term antidote to the nation’s energy problems, but you won’t hear that sentiment while gas prices remain at near-record levels. It’s simply bad politics, especially since the administration’s energy plan approved by Congress last summer focuses more on long-term solutions like building new refineries and other production boosters that won’t have any immediate effect on rising fuel prices. For months, administration officials have blamed Bush’s low poll numbers on high gas costs, and in the wake of Katrina and Rita, many privately worry about additional fallout if prices inch higher.
This week, Bush sought to reassure Americans that he understands the pain they are feeling at the pump by directing the federal government to lead by example. Bush advised his staff to use less air conditioning at the White House, to carpool or take the bus to work and to cut back on “non-essential travel.” But what does that mean for the highly-traveled commander in chief, who made his seventh visit in three weeks to the Gulf Coast on Tuesday?
Presidential travel isn’t cheap. According to the Air Force, it costs about $83,000 to fill up Air Force One, which averages out to about $6,000 an hour in fuel. Bush often travels on Marine One, the presidential helicopter, between the airport and the White House. On the ground, his motorcade sometimes stretches to more than 20 cars, including two presidential limos (one’s a decoy), three or four SUVs filled with Secret Service agents and staff and five or six vans for press, guests and other staff. Bush rides in a 2006 Cadillac DTS limousine which has been outfitted with bulletproof glass, heavy armor and other security measures making it heavier than the average vehicle and less fuel efficient. A luxury-sedan version of the car sold to the general public boasts an 18-gallon fuel tank and gets about 20 miles per gallon, according to General Motors.
On Tuesday, the White House shortened the presidential motorcade by a few vehicles, consolidating two press vans into one and asking guests to ride in the designated staff van. Even so, the motorcade still traveled less than a mile from Air Force One to a meeting with local officials across the airport tarmac. White House Press Secretary McClellan said it would be Bush’s last trip to the region this week, though he wouldn’t say if that was a cost-cutting decision. “All the steps people can take will help, and that’s why we look at all these measures,” McClellan said.
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