After first spreading a series of lies about Hormel, right-wingers are now using the fig leaf that he has refused to denounce a gay acting troupe whose members sometimes dress up as nuns. Luxembourg is 99 percent Roman Catholic and the Republican Senate, oh-so-deeply sensitive, believes this disqualifies the presumptive ambassador. The Luxembourgers themselves apparently don’t agree, but who asked them? We’re playing the “failure to denounce” game here. Very important Senate business.
When President Clinton tired of the game and two weeks ago used his power to grant Hormel a “recess” appointment (good until the end of Clinton’s term without Senate approval), Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma went to the ramparts. Inhofe announced that he was single-handedly holding up the nominations of Richard Holbrooke to be ambassador to the United Nations (already unjustifiably delayed) and Lawrence Summers to be Treasury secretary until Clinton withdrew the appointment of this gay man who condoned a dance troupe. Majority Leader Trent Lott, who has compared homosexuals to “kleptomaniacs,” said he wouldn’t rein Inhofe in. Never mind that Holbrooke is needed desperately to handle critical Balkans diplomacy, and news of the delay of Summers’s nomination sent the dollar tumbling against foreign currencies. Just another day’s work for the GOP.
Here’s Bush’s response to this matter: “As a general statement, if someone can do a job, and a job he’s qualified for, that person ought to be able to do his job.” Sounds tolerant. But at the same time, Bush won’t defend Hormel because the nominee “doesn’t share the governor’s conservative agenda.” As for Inhofe’s maneuver, Bush spokesman David Beckwith says the governor loathes gridlock: “He’s going to have a different style.” But Bush wants it known that in general he opposes recess appointments. In sum, Beckwith says, “Bush’s position would be softer, but not a lot softer.”
Got that? If the cloudy temporizing sounds familiar, you need not look far. Even before he finesses big issues like abortion and Social Security, Bush’s approach already resembles that of a certain fellow Yalie trimmer from a neighboring state.
Comparing anyone to Clinton is a grievous insult nowadays. But of course there are many Clintons. The one who fudges and parses is a bad one for Bush to sound like. But the smart Clinton is the one who moved his party to the center, proving anew that that’s where elections are won in this country. Bush knows this is his historical mission, too; we don’t know yet whether he is a big enough man to complete it. He didn’t flunk the Hormel test outright, but he didn’t pass it, either.
Bush’s “expectations” problem has been misunderstood. He can likely survive the bricks thrown his way by Steve Forbes, especially since the attacks are “expected”–and thereby discounted. He can survive the press jackals who set some arbitrary bar for primary returns (50 percent of the vote?) below which he must not fall–as long as neither he nor his aides make the often fatal mistake of setting the bar too high themselves. And unless he’s a true birdbrain on the campaign trail or turns out to have not just skeletons in his closet but eyewitnesses willing to rattle them publicly, Bush can almost certainly survive the expectation that he be flawless. It will take more than a few gaffes to sink him.
But there’s a greater expectation–that he should be able to bend the GOP to his will, and not the other way around. To do so requires, at a minimum, finding the equivalent of Sister Souljah, a black rapper who made the mistake of talking some intolerant trash during the 1992 presidential campaign. In front of Jesse Jackson, Clinton attacked her by name, sending an unmistakable message that he was independent of his party’s left wing. Bush will have to do something similar, but his options are more limited. He can’t very well attack Pat Robertson or Charlton Heston–they’re too popular still with GOP rank and file. And since the press now expects him to find some benighted right-winger to be his patsy, it will have less impact when he lands his blow.
You would think Bush’s notions like “prosperity with a purpose” and “compassionate conservatism” would be totally unobjectionable. You would be wrong. Both Lamar Alexander and Dan Quayle have signaled their intention to go after Bush as a squish–a candidate who supports such dangerous ideas as providing a bit more money for after-school programs. Of course, this will help Bush to seem moderate by comparison. On some issues, he’s locked in a right-wing vise; the Democrats will clearly blast him for signing a bill encouraging people to carry concealed weapons. But on many other matters, there’s still room for George W. to prove to centrist voters that he’s a reform Republican. Luxembourg is unimportant, but the principle isn’t. Bush must get the party of Lincoln to stop embracing bigotry and prejudice, in any form. Is that too much to expect?
