Will the Different Voices Make a Difference?

By Michael A. Fletcher
Monday, June 18, 2007

Friend and foe alike have long grumbled that President Bush should shed some of the Texas insiders on his staff and assemble a more diverse team willing to confront him with competing ideas and bad news. Now it seems the president is doing just that, but at a stage when his low popularity ratings and dwindling time left in office threaten to diminish his presidential clout as never before.

"Having an A Team is better late than never," lobbyist and White House pal Ed Rogers told our colleague Michael Abramowitz.

White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten has worked his considerable charm and broad network of contacts to bring in a string of appointees that many see as second to none. Last week, Bush named former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie to be White House counselor to replace the departing Dan Bartlett. Earlier, Bolten somehow talked Daniel M. Price, who had built a thriving legal practice, into joining the National Security Council in an important but low-profile role in charge of international economic affairs. This came after Bolten helped bring heavyweights Henry M. Paulson Jr. (Treasury), Fred F. Fielding (counsel's office), Robert M. Gates (Defense) and Tony Snow (press office), among others, into the White House fold.

"I usually begin my [recruiting] calls by saying, 'This is your country calling,' " Bolten cracked. And people respond, he said, out of both a sense of patriotism and personal loyalty to the president. Bolten rejects the critique that the president ever had an amen chorus around him, but he added: "Six years into a presidency it is important to have fresh voices and perspectives."

"Each major appointment he has made has generally been recognized as equal or superior to the one he replaced," said George Washington University professor Stephen Hess. But when asked whether he thought the new blood would cause the beleaguered administration to change course, Hess was not so upbeat. "Not really," he said.

Recess Games

Normally, it would be a no-brainer for Senate Democrats to please their base and shoot down President Bush's nomination of Hans A. von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission.

Civil rights groups and others say the hyper-political von Spakovsky, while at the Justice Department, attempted to quash efforts to expand minority access to voting and that he favored Tom DeLay's gerrymandering efforts. So, with the Dems in charge of the Senate, he's toast, right?

Not so fast, advises our colleague Al Kamen. It's more complicated than that. Turns out that killing von Spakovsky's nomination could give Bush a golden opportunity to use his recess powers to appoint a majority of the commission in 2008 -- or leave the commission without a quorum.

Here's how that works. Right now, von Spakovsky and two Democrats -- FEC Chairman Robert D. Lenhard and Majority Leader Sen. Harry M. Reid's pick, Steven T. Walther-- are recess appointees on the six-member commission, which must be split evenly between R's and D's.

Two other members -- a Democrat and a Republican -- can stay on until their replacements are confirmed, even though their terms have long expired. The last seat, which goes to a Republican, recently opened and Bush is expected to nominate someone to fill it.

Senate Democrats would be happy to confirm Lenhard and Walther, but not von Spakovsky. But Senate Republicans oppose such cherry-picking and want the votes taken -- as they traditionally have been -- as a package, one for one: your crony, my crony.

Otherwise, GOPers grumble, they may block all nominations and leave the commission, once the three current recess nominees' appointments expire at the end of this year, without a quorum or let Bush, if he wants, make three or four new recess appointments to the commission.

Those new recess appointments would be good until the end of next year -- that is, until after the elections. Not a particularly appealing prospect for the Democrats.

Polling a Pardon

Can a president mired with a 35 percent approval rating in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll (and even lower in others) go any lower? At least some supporters are ready to test the proposition by urging President Bush to pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby after a judge last week ruled that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff must begin serving his 2 1/2 -year prison sentence without waiting for appeals to play out.

Past polling suggests that pardons in political cases don't go over well with the public. President Gerald R. Ford is the most extreme example, of course. After pardoning predecessor Richard M. Nixon in 1974, he saw his approval rating tank, falling from 71 percent to 50 percent and arguably costing him the 1976 election.

Voters strongly opposed a pardon for Adm. John M. Poindexter during Iran-contra in 1987 and Ronald Reagan listened to the 61 percent who advised him not to grant clemency. George H.W. Bush, on the other hand, ignored the polls when he pardoned former defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and other Iran-contra figures in 1992, even though 56 percent disapproved. Bill Clinton's last-minute pardons of financier Marc Rich, Whitewater figure Susan McDougal, former Cabinet secretary Henry G. Cisneros and brother Roger Clinton in 2001 were so controversial that 46 percent even wanted a criminal investigation.

The one major exception is Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North. Sixty-one percent of voters in 1987 thought Reagan should pardon the former National Security Council aide who electrified the country with his congressional testimony. Reagan didn't need to, though, because an appeals court overturned North's conviction.

There appears to be no political benefit to pardoning Libby. March surveys by Time, Gallup and CNN found nearly 7 in 10 Americans oppose the idea. Then again, just 29 percent of respondents knew who Libby was, according to a Pew poll. Of course, Bush could just commute Libby's sentence without pardoning him, a split-the-difference approach that would no doubt still outrage the left while leaving the right angry that the president didn't go far enough. That way, everyone would be unhappy at once. After all, he's a uniter, not a divider.

Moscow on the Potomac

Top Russian officials were all over town last week trying to pitch Moscow's line in advance of the upcoming Kennebunkport summit between Bush and his onetime soul mate, President Vladimir Putin. It's all just a distortion, the Russians told folks in Washington, that Putin has rolled back democracy, crushed the opposition and stomped on press freedom.

Still, as Kremlin deputy press secretary Dmitri Peskov told reporters and editors at The Post, it can be a challenge working with the Moscow press corps, colleague Peter Baker reports. Or as Peskov pronounced it, "working in Moscow with the corpse of the media."

Fact Check

White House spokesman Tony Snow, explaining the firing of eight U.S. attorneys to reporters on March 15: "What the president is saying is that there is no -- that in evaluating U.S. attorneys, this is based on performance."

Snow being asked about the firings by reporters last Wednesday:

Q: Okay, but at the beginning of this story, the president, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based.

Snow: That is something -- we have never said that.