Enemy occupies Washington

The mainstream media have
been too busy puffing Bush
to capture the essence of the GOP's Washington takeover

By Seth Gitell

WASHINGTON, DC -- Ever wonder who watches Walker: Texas Ranger? Starring Chuck Norris as a martial-arts expert and crime fighter, Walker airs on CBS on Saturday nights. You're probably not at home to watch it. But someone is. Throughout the '90s, it popped up on television's Top 10 lists. The same goes for those country-music stars who, every few years or so, perform during the halftime show in the Super Bowl. No one I know has ever heard of these people -- they all blend together in a mind-numbing mix of names like Travis and Billy Bob, Faith and Leanne. But someone's listening to them, because they sell millions of records.

Well, this past weekend I met those people. The folks who wear high-school letter jackets. The folks who don military uniforms -- and enjoy it. The folks who wear fur coats, Stetsons, and cowboy boots. The folks who hire limos instead of hailing taxis. Folks who eat steak and don't worry about cholesterol. I met them because they came to Washington this weekend for the inauguration of President George W. Bush. At first I thought they were simply ridiculous. But by the end of the weekend I was thinking of them as Bush's Army.

Of course, you wouldn't get any of this by reading mainstream-media accounts of the inauguration. The Washington-based coverage seemed to confirm the assessment of the Atlantic's media writer, William Powers: "When a President is inaugurated, a funny thing happens to most media people. They turn soft and gooey. They coo and giggle.... In short, they behave a lot like Larry King." On NBC, the pundits marveled over Bush's teariness after being sworn in. Writing in the New York Times, R.W. "Johnny" Apple extolled the virtues of "the inaugural ceremony itself, one of the surpassing rituals of the American democracy." The Washington Post published a 24-page inaugural special section, with nine different photos of Bush on the cover. Inside, it included puff pieces on Vice-President Dick Cheney and first lady Laura Bush -- and an eager nod to the impending "Infusion of Lone Star Folks, Culture," as the headline read. None of this conveyed the cultural sea change -- and looming culture wars -- that Bush's inauguration represents.

More than anything else I saw over the inaugural weekend, an encounter between a group of about 20 Army ushers and inaugural protesters epitomized the gaping divide in this country. The 20 ushers, cloaked in their garrison caps and followed by an equal number of sailors, stumbled upon a protest at the Supreme Court sponsored by the Reverend Al Sharpton. Confusion quickly ensued, and the procession halted. An anxious officer sent out the order to "form up in twos" -- which they did. Then the mini-army stayed in place

until a black junior officer from the Navy talked some sense into the group. "It's a peaceful demonstration," he said. "They're not going to harm us." The group then did a two-step march through the protest and went on its way.

The people who are now in charge are white-bread, straight, clean-cut, rural, mostly teetotaling (with a few angry exceptions that we'll get to later), Christian, and blond. They filled the hall for Cheney's "Salute to Veterans," featuring Connie Stevens, Lee Greenwood, and the Singing Sergeants, a 24-member US Air Force choir. They applauded Bush's right-wing pick for attorney general, John Ashcroft, at a prayer lunch organized by the conservative Washington Times Foundation. They probably believed Bush when he made a "solemn pledge" during his inaugural address to "work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity." Of course, this cultural sea change is more than a matter of barbecue vs. nouvelle cuisine; it comes down to basic values. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Bush voters were more likely than Gore supporters to attend church, own guns, live in rural areas, and be married.

Bush's ability to manage this divide will define his presidency. He was elected with less than half of the votes cast for president. Although conservatives like to point out that, in 1992, Clinton also failed to win a majority of the vote, this analysis misses the point that votes for Clinton and Ross Perot combined -- which constituted a majority of the votes cast in that election -- were all votes against George H.W. Bush. Moreover, Clinton managed to draw votes from both the inner city and the deep South. In 2000, you didn't need pollster Stan Greenberg to figure out where Bush's votes came from. Throughout the campaign, Bush constantly harangued us with declarations that he is a uniter-not-a-divider and regaled us with tales of his ability to bring people together. Well, the people he "united" were Texans, and they are a small, relatively homogenous group. Now we're talking about the entire country, where our differences are much, much greater. Not only will the task be more difficult, but the stakes are much higher, too.

EARLY SIGNS from Bush don't bode well for his prospects of bridging the cultural divide. After all, former Republican presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan both asked the Reverend Peter Gomes, the gay, black, Baptist Ivy Leaguer, to lead prayers at their inaugurations (though it is true that he was not openly gay at the time). In striking contrast, W. called upon the evangelical Reverend Franklin Graham, the Bible-thumping son of Billy Graham, to give the invocation at his inauguration. Unlike John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, who invited poets Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, respectively, to speak at their inaugurations, Bush put the spotlight on the Dupont Manual High School/Youth Performing Arts Choir. During his speech, Bush referred to the "wounded traveler on the road to Jericho" and invoked God so often that Wall Street Journal columnist and former Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan praised the speech as "God-filled."

But the issue probably isn't Bush's ability to bring the country together; it's his sincerity in wanting to do so. When you're trying to unite the country, you don't nominate for attorney general John Ashcroft, a man who gives interviews to the neo-confederate journal Southern Partisan, and you don't issue an anti-choice executive order on the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. You do things like that when you're playing to one half of the country -- the blond corporate half -- and figure the other half can go to hell.

On Thursday, only two days before Bush made his solemn pledge to unite the country, Ronnie White, an African-American judge from St. Louis, testified during Senate hearings on former Missouri senator Ashcroft's nomination. White, a member of the Missouri judiciary, told the Senate panel how Ashcroft had derailed his nomination to the federal district court of the Eastern District of Missouri in 1999. Ashcroft, preparing for the political fight of his life against Missouri governor Mel Carnahan, had concocted a plan to win by outflanking Carnahan on the death-penalty issue. White's nomination provided Ashcroft with the perfect opportunity to do so. Just when White's nomination seemed to be sailing along, Ashcroft claimed that White had dissented on a capital-case appeal because the trial judge was "opposed to affirmative action." He also worked behind the scenes to label White as a "pro-criminal" judge and one "with a strong bent toward criminal activity."

During White's testimony at Ashcroft's hearing last week, it emerged that the real reason White had ruled in favor of a new trial was that just six days before the trial (during which an African-American man was accused of murder), the trial judge released a statement explaining his switch from the Democratic to Republican Party that said, in part: "While minorities need to be represented, of course, I believe the time has come for us to place much more concern on the hard-working taxpayers in this country." White said that he based his ruling on the fact that a person who would utter such a "a pernicious racial stereotype" and exclude minorities from the broad category of "hard-working taxpayers" could not be trusted to rule without bias in the trial of an African-American.

Ashcroft's defenders didn't see it this way. Senator Jefferson Sessions, a Republican from Alabama, described the judge's remarks as merely "insensitive at worst." Of course, this was exactly the wrong message for Republicans to send out at a time when their leader says he wants to unite the country. Surely one of the groups that Bush could aim at in his hope to build bridges is middle- and upper-class blacks. Washington, DC, is a city that, despite first impressions, has a vibrant and thriving African-American middle class. According to the Web site targetmarketnews.com, African-American income grew from $441 billion to $490 billion between 1998 and 1999 and outpaced income growth among whites. This is a group at the cusp of comfort in America. These prosperous African-Americans are the people who, in theory, could be wooed by Bush and his economic policies -- but as long as Bush attaches his party to the Ashcrofts of this world, African-Americans are likely to remain repulsed by the GOP. And they're likely to continue voting the way they did in 2000: for all the talk of anti-Semitism in the black community, African-Americans went for the Gore-Lieberman ticket nine to one.

Combine Bush's support of politicians like Ashcroft with lingering claims that his brother stole Florida for him by denying blacks the right to vote, and you've got a recipe for division, not unity. All this was evident at Saturday's post-inaugural protest march to the Supreme Court led by the master-of-the-mob Al Sharpton and his National Action Network. "We're just disenchanted with the way they held back the vote," said Baily, a protester who would give only her first name. An interracial group of protesters held signs reading HAIL TO THE THIEF and SUPPORT THE VOTERS' BILL OF RIGHTS. Though protest organizers scrupulously avoided confrontations with the DC and Capitol Police by reminding demonstrators, "These police officers are not our target. Please do not provoke them," the mood was ugly.

Later the march proceeded to the area around the Supreme Court. Riot police, wearing helmets and face masks and carrying truncheons, lined the steps to bar access to what looked to be at least 3000 protesters. Someone carried a sign reading SCENE OF THE CRIME, and a swarm of other protesters filled the sidewalk across the street. Though there were not as many street protesters as some TV visuals would suggest, those who were there cast a shadow on Bush's inauguration -- and further highlighted the widening cultural divide.

Many of these protesters -- who have coalesced since Seattle's anti-World Trade Organization conflagration -- now stand to gain influence by working alongside mainstream liberal groups that are angry at the Bush administration. In a dynamic similar to that of the 1930s Popular Front, when opponents of conservatism from liberals to leftists joined together in common purpose until the Hitler-Stalin Pact put an end to their cooperation, progressive opposition to the Bush administration will help protesters gain momentum. Compare this with what happened under Clinton, whose charm and uncanny knack for finessing political differences diffused acrimony on the left. Bush won't be able to do that.

SATURDAY'S INAUGURAL Balls paled before the snazzy events of the Clinton era. There's a perception out there that the Republicans party better than the Democrats, but the Bushies aren't your father's Republicans. Sure, there were plenty of fine cigars being smoked -- no Cubans, presumably -- and Governor Paul Cellucci hosted the party of the week at the Kennedy Center. But in general, the Republican inaugural parties were duds. At the Massachusetts Ball, which the Bay State had the misfortune to share with other states, including Colorado, Idaho, and Virginia, the spirit of the Pentecostal Ashcroft (who doesn't dance or drink alcohol) seemed to hover in the air. As Kenny Rogers tunes blared in the background, GOP loyalists waited in line 20 minutes for drinks and dived at food trays as servers tried to carry them to tables. "They have the worst vodka in the world," one Capitol Hill staffer complained. "For $125, you ought to be able to get a goddamn drink," shouted another.

But the lousy food and the bad vodka did more than show that a new administration -- one decidedly different from the last -- is in town. President Bush did that all by himself. When he took the stage shortly after 9 p.m. -- he would stay awake for only two more hours -- he praised Missouri, the "home of the next attorney general." He also singled out for praise the state that had helped him most during the Republican primaries -- South Carolina.

"I can't help but say something about South Carolina," he said, bringing to mind with just one sentence just how great the cultural divide is. Remember? Senator John McCain had wounded Bush badly in New Hampshire, and the Texan desperately needed a win. So he went to the paleo-conservative Bob Jones University and the evangelical right, who delivered the state to him.

South Carolina? Ashcroft? Kenny Rogers? Sound like battle cries? Well, that's because they are. This is no way to unify a country. It's a great way to divide it further.

Seth Gitell can be reached as sgitell[a]phx.com.