From the WSJ Opinion Archives
POTOMAC WATCH
Hung Out to Dry
For some, Bush loyalty is a one-way street.
Everyone says George W. Bush prizes loyalty above all else. But the question after this week is whether he values loyalty down the chain of command as much as he does loyalty up.
Just ask Linda Chavez and Frank Keating. Ms. Chavez was thrown over the side as labor secretary this week, and perhaps her departure was inevitable. She broke a prime Bush tenet in not telling her vetters about her immigrant houseguest before she was nominated. But the ease with which she was dispatched still ought to give every Bush loyalist pause.
As for Oklahoma Gov. Keating, he merely campaigned for Mr. Bush in 25 states last fall. His reward was to see personal financial details leaked to the media as the excuse for rejecting him as attorney general.
These cases are resonating in political circles, especially among the activists Mr. Bush will need when the inaugural glow fades. His cabinet choices showed a recognition that he needs a breadth of allies. But this week Republicans are wondering anew about his fidelity in a foxhole.
Angry about her lack of candor, Bush officials let the media frenzy build without offering a defense. They issued gradually weaker statements of public support. Ms. Chavez finally organized her own press conference with immigrant allies. But she chose to make it her swan song after reading Mr. Bush's nonsupport signals.
She also got the Typhoid Mary treatment at transition headquarters. Defense nominee Donald Rumsfeld was the only big shot who expressed solidarity. Team Bush sent its most junior press aide to accompany her. ("I thought there was some other big event going on elsewhere in the building," Ms. Chavez quips.) Another aide tried to stop her from taking questions.
The danger for Mr. Bush will be if his supporters conclude that he defines loyalty only in personal, not ideological, terms. Any president needs people who'll take risks for his agenda. Ms. Chavez's defeat, after all, also meant a victory for her (and his) Big Labor opponents. At least his appointment of Elaine Chao yesterday went some way toward preserving Ms. Chavez's ideas.
The Bushies floated Mr. Keating's name as a finalist for vice president and attorney general. That he didn't get either job is fair enough. But then this week Newsweek ran a story about his finances based on information he had provided to the Bush campaign, at their request.
Starting in 1990, financier Jack Dreyfus offered to pay for Mr. Keating's three kids' college education with gifts up to the legal limit of $10,000 each a year--to a total of about $250,000. The two are friends and no one has ever shown a policy quid pro quo.
Mr. Keating disclosed the gifts on his public ethics forms and they were cleared with both the ethics office at HUD, where he then worked, and by the federal Office of Government Ethics. Senate Democrats also saw the info when Mr. Keating was nominated for the federal bench late in President Bush's term. (Democrats ran out the clock on most judicial nominees.)
Keating allies don't believe that these legal gifts from a man who is also a big donor to Democrats would have cost him Senate confirmation, and neither do I. Yet the details were gratuitously spun to show that Mr. Bush had disqualified Mr. Keating because of them. Leaked amid the Chavez uproar, they seem aimed at making Team Bush look good for thorough vetting--at the expense of both Ms. Chavez and Mr. Keating.
A small furor erupted in Oklahoma, where Mr. Keating still has two years to govern. Democrats and media wanted to know about this ominous "skeleton" that had kept their governor out of his pal's cabinet. My sources say an angry Mr. Keating called Bush chief of staff Andy Card to say that "I would not treat a mangy dog the way you treated me."
All the governor will say on the record is that "I've been as loyal and committed a friend to George W. Bush as anyone. And I'm puzzled and hurt by all of these recent leaks." His friends are less delicate. They see the leak as revenge for the real reason Mr. Keating wasn't chosen as AG: He'd publicly second-guessed Bush campaign strategy.
He was right, especially in advising Mr. Bush to quickly disclose any problem in his personal past. Had he followed that advice, Mr. Bush wouldn't have opened himself to the last-minute DUI story that nearly cost him the presidency. But Team Bush defines loyalty as shutting up, right or wrong.
The U.S. Marines strive never to leave their casualties on the battlefield, which is one reason they are revered and feared. At last check Mr. Bush hadn't yet called Ms. Chavez or Mr. Keating about their recent troubles.
Mr. Gigot is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
