1/29/01 4:35 p.m.
Empower Failure
Empower America hires a Clintonite.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

ashington's new spirit of bipartisanship may be getting out of hand at Empower America: The good people over there have just announced that President Clinton's secretary of defense, William Cohen, has signed on as a co-director. He joins Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Vin Weber.

A spokesman for the organization points out that while it is conservative, its members have never agreed on everything; Kemp and Bennett have debated the causes of and solutions to poverty, and Kemp and Kirkpatrick have increasingly diverged on foreign policy. The spokesman also mentions that Empower America will not be Cohen's home base, and that he will be doing a lot of work on technology issues on which he is a conservative.

Still, the hire is raising eyebrows in D.C. Cohen was a Republican senator, but most Republicans now regard him as only nominally one of them since Clinton appointed him. He served with no particular distinction at the Pentagon: He put off hard budgeting decisions, ignored readiness problems, stymied the cause of missile defense — the list is long. Like the former commander-in-chief, he did not have a good rapport with the troops. "His most notable impact was in proving himself to be the biggest dandy ever to occupy the office," says one Republican defense strategist. Indeed, Cohen's visit to Camp Pendleton a year ago — when he stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, rather than on base, for "security" reasons — is the stuff of legend. (The Washington Bulletin wrote about the incident.)

In the press release hailing Cohen's new role, Empower America also congratulates board member Donald Rumsfeld for getting the job Cohen has left behind: "For Empower America and the U.S. Department of Defense, this is truly a win-win situation!"

It's certainly a win for the Pentagon: It loses Cohen, and gains Rumsfeld. Empower America, on the other hand, might want to keep an eye on those expense-account forms.