Playing the game

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, January 26, 2005



" I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed

prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care

to know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for me; he can’t

be any worse. "—Mark Twain



Never mind the Republicans’ objections to" affirmative action" and

"quotas." When it comes to the politics of personal identity, nobody

plays the game better than the Bush administration. Which is not to say

that Democrats fuming over the nominations of Alberto Gonzales as

attorney general and Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state haven’t had

it coming for years. After all, Bill Clinton promised to appoint a

cabinet that "looked like America," a laudable goal with sometimes

unfortunate consequences. Was Janet Reno the strongest attorney general

he could find or merely the most plausible woman available after two

earlier nominees withdrew? Now George W. Bush has seen him and raised

him, as they say in poker.



Based upon their performances in public office, two worse choices than

Gonzales and Rice can hardly be imagined. Both appear to place ambition

and personal loyalty above all competing values, beginning with truth.

They’re less public servants than courtiers to the House of Bush.



Meanwhile, with the notable exceptions of Sens. Barbara Boxer and John

Kerry, Democrats appear too fearful to express strong opposition lest

somebody like Rush Limbaugh call them hypocrites or racists.



The trap’s inherent in identity politics. Me, I was raised on the

Irish-Catholic version. My father had an oft-repeated slogan I took as

the essence of Americanism. "You’re no better than anybody else," he’d

growl, "and nobody’s better than you."



Otherwise, it’s rubbish to say everybody of a given ethnic persuasion

should agree politically. But it’s dangerous nonsense to say we can’t

criticize people because of who they are.



Bush tells people how much he admires Gonzales’ rags-to-riches life

story. A native Texan and the son of Mexican immigrants, Gonzales

served in the Air Force before graduating from Rice University and Harvard Law

School. When Bush met him, he was a partner at the Houston

establishment law firm of Vinson & Elkins.



Well, good for him. So he’s smart and ambitious. Based upon his legal

work, however, he’s also an authoritarian yesman. As Texas Gov. Bush’s

legal counsel, he wrote decision memos in death penalty cases. After

studying them, the Atlantic Monthly reported that "Gonzales repeatedly

failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand:

ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even

actual evidence of innocence"; hence, Bush approved executions based

on" only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. "



As White House counsel, Gonzales approved memos arguing that laws

against torture do" not apply to the President’s detention and

interrogation of enemy combatants. "He called the Geneva Convention

protecting POWs" obsolete" and "quaint." He wrote that anything short

of "death, organ failure or serious impairment of body functions" wasn’t

torture. All because Bush and his country-club warriors wanted to act

tough.



The result has been a sickening wave of atrocities at Abu Ghraib and

elsewhere that has discredited U.S. claims to stand for human rights

and the rule of law, strengthened the Iraqi insurrection and benefited

terrorist propaganda worldwide. Not to mention endangering Americans

who fall into enemy hands. "It is astonishing that [Gonzales] has been

nominated," writes conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan, "and even more

astonishing that he will almost certainly be confirmed."



Then there’s Dr. Rice, as she likes being called, a dead giveaway.

During the propaganda buildup to the Iraqi war, nobody was more

dogmatic about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear arsenal. "We don’t want

the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," she warned.



After Bush was criticized for including previously discredited claims

about Saddam’s nonexistent nuclear weapons in a speech, a White House

spokesman alibied that neither he nor Rice had read the entire 90-page

National Intelligence Estimate about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

A Stanford sophomore, where Rice was provost, would be failed for that.

Rice was barely criticized.



Then there was her bizarre appearance before the 9/11 Commission. Rice

obstinately insisted that the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, CIA briefing she

and Bush ignored was purely "historical in nature" and "did not warn of

attacks inside the United States." In fact, the document cited

"suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for

hijackings or other types of attacks," and stipulated New York and

Washington as likely targets. Yet when the Senate’s Boxer recently

sought to ask her about these and similar misrepresentations, Rice

treated it as a smear against her personal character. Nobody overtly

played the race card, because nobody had to. That’s the problem with

the politics of identity: It makes the private public and the public

private to the detriment of both.



• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient

of the National Magazine Award.