Bush’s Civil-Rights Vision Thing
Bush & civil rights, one year later.

By John J. Miller, national political reporter
January 21, 2002 8:55 a.m.

resident Bush remains a mystery on civil-rights issues a full year after taking office. As a candidate, he played a nimble rhetorical game, employing made-up terms like "affirmative access" and refusing to answer straightforward questions, such as whether he supported California's Proposition 209. He also presided over the Philadelphia convention, which was advanced as a celebration of diversity but looked curiously like an endorsement of bean counting.

His administration has not taken bold steps against racial preferences, either. The Department of Justice's decision to maintain the Clinton administration's position on the Adarand case was disappointing, though excusable. Less excusable is the continuing failure to overturn obnoxious Clinton-era race regulations. In Bush's defense, though, this president was not elected to shake up the status quo on civil rights, and it's not like he's needed additional items on his agenda in recent months.

But conservatives ready to slump their shoulders at all this also should know that Bush has made a series of important appointments. Picking Colin Powell as secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as national-security adviser has nothing to do with race or civil rights — though their mere presence as high-ranking blacks in a Republican administration provides powerful ammunition against the Left's constant claim that blacks can't make it in America.

Less visibly, Bush has made a series of outstanding appointments to civil-rights posts. As head of the civil-rights division at the Department of Justice, Ralph Boyd already has made a difference. He's not filing lawsuits against universities that employ racial preferences — an item on the conservative wish list — but he has put an end to his predecessor Bill Lann Lee's habit of filing briefs in support of racial preferences everywhere he could. Boyd also has refused to file briefs at the appellate level in cases where Lee was active at the trial level. Both of these steps are substantial improvements.

Other notable Bush appointments include Charles James (husband of Kay Cole James) at the Department of Labor's compliance office and Jennifer Braceras and Peter Kirsanow at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Gerald Reynolds is a promising nominee for the civil-rights office at the Department of Education, though he remains unconfirmed and hasn't even had a hearing.

Boyd, James, Kirsanow, and Reynolds are black and Braceras is Hispanic — and together they represent an outstanding team ready and able to execute a conservative vision on civil-rights policy. Before they can do that, though, they need a vision from the top. Or at least a vision thing.

War Partisans
Did Dick Gephardt just promise that Democrats won't criticize President Bush if the war on terrorism starts to go poorly? Sure seems that way, given his angry attack on White House adviser Karl Rove over the weekend. At a Republican National Committee meeting, Rove reviewed some recent polls and told his audience, "we can go to the country on this [terrorism] issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." Gephardt chimed in the next day, calling Rove's remarks "shameful" and saying the war "is not a partisan issue."

But of course the war is a partisan issue — and it ought to be. The public should judge wartime presidents on the progress of their wars. This has been the case historically — Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in 1864 because the federal army captured Atlanta two months before Election Day, LBJ rightly suffered in 1968 for failures in Vietnam — and these assessments are probably more important than peacetime ones because so much is at stake. The reason Gephardt doesn't want the war to become a partisan issue, of course, is because it has gone pretty well — and this is reflected in high approval ratings for the president. But there's no guarantee it will continue to go smoothly. Osama bin Laden remains at large, which poses an increasingly thorny problem for Bush as time goes on. There's also the question of Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration will bear some responsibility for what the Iraqi dictator does or does not do in the future, depending on particular actions it takes in the coming months.

Profiles in Courage
After spending months on a Teddy Kennedy charm offensive — visits to the White House for movies, naming the Justice Department building after RFK — the Bush administration may at last be discovering that the senator from tax-achusetts is better to have as an enemy than a friend. In this respect, somebody should call more attention to a line from Kennedy's tax-hike speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Here's what he said during the question-and-answer session: "In the United States Senate, one of the things I observed in the early days — and it's still used — and that is that you take someone's argument and then you misrepresent it and misstate and disagree with it. And it's very effective. I've done it myself a number of times. But eventually, eventually people catch on."

Fighting for Life
Tomorrow is the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. The White House has released a strong statement from the president on the sanctity of human life.