The following is from the letter from John DiIulio, who resigned as director of Bush’s White House Office Of Faith-based and Community Initiatives.

My words: It is indeed scary that Bush was ever voted in as either president or governor, given that NOTHING in his background qualified him for public service, and EVERYTHING seemed to point to someone who could only destroy everything he touched. HIs complete lack of seriousness in his college days, left his former college buddies aghast that someone like that could ever rise to be president. DiIulio’s testimony lends much credence to the fact that this president continues to operate without curiosity for knowledge or substantive dialogue. JOsh Marshall’s recent article, as well as much of my recent book reading, compels me to highlight this two-year old article again today.

The DiIulio Letter to Esquire, 10/24/02

In DiIulio’s words, “there is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: complete lack of a policy apparatus. Besides the tax cut, which was cut and dried during the campaign, and the education bill, which was really a Ted Kennedy bill, the administration has not done much, either in absolute terms or in comparison to previous administrations at this stage, on domestic policy. What you’ve got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis. [They] consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.” The former White House director confides, “I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis … Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking: : discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera .” DiIulio goes on to tell us that “the remarkably slapdash character of the Office of Homeland Security, with the nine months of arguing that no department was needed, with the sudden, politically timed reversal in June

“Remember ‘No child left behind’? That was a Bush campaign slogan. I believe it was his heart, too. But translating good impulses into good policy proposals requires more than whatever somebody thinks up in the eleventh hour before a speech is to be delivered.”

Not only do we remember it, the Bush administration actually continues to call on it as an example of their “Comapssionate Conservatism”, but , as DiIulio observed, it has to be moved from words into actual political and budgetary support.

DiIulio wrote this seven-page letter sent to Ron Suskind after a a few weeks after their first conversation , and it was included and summarized in the following article, and also in the book, The Price of Loyalty. Why Are These Men Laughing, about Karl Rove, the president’s close political advisor.

Suskind introduces the story with some memory of a close friend of Rove’s, which led to this preface:
When I heard this story, it made me like Karl Rove. It made him sound like a hero to children, and in my view, there’s no better person. But I’ve never heard another story like this one, because people in Washington, especially Rove’s friends, are utterly petrified to talk about him.

Other choice quotes from the article:

Sources in the West Wing, echoing DiIulio’s comments, say that even cursory discussion of domestic policy became much less frequent after September 11, 2001, with the exception of Homeland Security. Meanwhile, the department of “Strategery,” or the “Strategery Group,” depending on the source, has steadily grown. The term, coined in 2000 by Saturday Night Live’s Will Ferrell, started as a joke at the White House, too, but has actually become a term of art meaning the oversight of any activity—from substantive policy to ideological stance to public event—by the president’s political thinkers

Suskind’s first meeting with Rove:
Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!” As a reporter, you get around—curse words, anger, passionate intensity are not notable events—but the ferocity, the bellicosity, the violent imputations were, well, shocking. This went on without a break for a minute or two. Then the aide slipped out looking a bit ashen, and Rove, his face ruddy from the exertions of the past few moments, looked at me and smiled a gentle, Clarence-the-Angel smile. “Come on in.” And I did. And we had the most amiable chat for a half hour.

a quote from William Kristol from the article:
“I believe Karl is Bush. They’re not separate, each of them freestanding, with distinct agendas, as some people say. Karl thinks X. Bush thinks X. Clearly, it’s a very complicated relationship.” He goes on to say that he thinks Bush is a “canny manager” who creates competing teams and plays them against one another. As for those who sometimes disagree with that point, he says, “There is criticism of Karl from the friends of the former President Bush who don’t approve of the way the current President Bush is doing his job in every case.”

On Falwell and the ReligiousRight:

Periodically, he (Rove) would ask John to advance the administration’s political agenda, and John would do what almost no one does currently at the White House now that Karen Hughes has left: tell Karl to take a hike.

“Sure, Karl,” DiIulio responded. “They don’t matter, but they’re in here all the time.”

DiIulio:
“one senior staff member chided me at a meeting at which many junior staff were present and all ears, ‘John, get a faith bill, any faith bill.’ “

The arrogance, and the condescension in such a chiding is deplorable to me, and revealing about the seriousness of this administration about a program that was a strong component of their campaign, and still is in the minds of Bush supporters when I suggest this administration uses this issue as a “talking point” rather than substantive enabling of something approaching real ministry.