The curse of the nanny is almost routine these days. No White House team can dodge it as the vengeful virus spreads. Exit one director of homeland security designate in the time it takes to change a diaper (or fast-track a visa, as British home secretary David Blunkett did for his mistress’s childminder, and which has now led to his resignation). But do not, perhaps, follow the spin here too swiftly.
Pause over the disaster of Bernie Kerik before hurrying on. A woman he hired to care for his children turned out to be in the country illegally, and Kerik failed to pay Social Security taxes for her.
Kerik, unlike most other nannygate victims, isn’t some busy lady lawyer juggling private practice and a family in distracted desperation. Long ago, he was Rudy Giuliani’s driver, the chauffeur who became chief of Giuliani’s New York Police Department, the capo di tutti capos in charge for 9/11, the mate the ex-mayor recommended when he turned down the homeland job himself. Law enforcement and detection are his professional business, illegal immigration and proper payment of taxes his natural concerns.
But he wasn’t a natural choice — in experience or diplomacy — to run a great umbrella Department of State. The Senate hearings were always going to be tough, even before he ”discovered” a hole in nanny’s paperwork. And there’s the crucial, overarching point.
Kerik was a flawed candidate from the beginning. As he departs, the Oval Office sucks its collective thumb. Though Tom Ridge, the incumbent director, announced long before the election that he’d be quitting, the search for a successor has been a continuing botch. Which, in turn, sends an early, dissonant message about President George W Bush’s second term.
Only six weeks after his victory, the vibrations continue euphoric. Depressed Democrats wonder if they could ever win again. Pundits ponder theses about eternal Republican hegemony. Talk is of more Bush power, more neo-conservative solutions, more variations on a narrow agenda. But is that quite what unfolding events tell us?
The White House got its director of national intelligence last week, who will supervise a $40-billion annual budget and sit atop the CIA, FBI and assorted agencies. It didn’t, however, get these plans through Congress without a grinding argument, with Republicans leading the charge. And it hasn’t got a star candidate for that top job, either.
For all the hot air rising, the great umbrellas of civil defence and proactive intelligence are still folded, while around Bush’s Cabinet table talented operators like Colin Powell, and many less formidable figures, depart. That’s natural, perhaps. But the interesting thing is who survives: not just Donald Rumsfeld, but notably underpowered performers like Treasury Secretary John Snow. No one, it seems, is keen on joining this ”refreshed” administration. No one sees their future there.
There is no future that Bush can offer beyond four years. Senator Joe Biden is already signalling he will be a Democratic contender in 2008; Hillary Clinton openly ponders her options; likely governors clear their diaries and form campaign teams. This race never stops, this race is never won. And Bush has voluntarily relinquished his right to a say on its course.
He let (or perhaps was powerless to resist) Dick Cheney be his running mate again. Cheney is not a possible candidate in 2008. He is thus the only vice-president serving a second (fixed) term president whose career automatically stops when the boss stops. Richard Nixon ran to succeed Dwight Eisenhower, Bush Snr to succeed Ronald Reagan, Al Gore to succeed Bill Clinton. While there was that prospect of continuity there was also some hope of continuing Washington employment. But, four years hence, all the old Bush boys get their cards.
It matters. It matters if you’re James Sensenbrenner, Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, who caused much grief over Bush’s national intelligence director — and vows to fight on. What has he to lose? He’ll be there when Bush is back at the ranch forever. It matters if you’re a Republican hopeful. You can’t keep quiet about things that go wrong; you have to be your own critical man.
Fixed terms carry their own curse in diminished clout. Doubly fixed terms of the Bush-Cheney variety grow debilitated even faster. Look at the highlights so far. Condoleezza Rice goes to State, but leaves only a number two behind to advise the president. Snow lingers to sweet- talk the budget deficit; Rumsfeld (72) stays to sort out his own mess; Porter Goss, already three years beyond the new Whitehall retiring age, takes over the CIA; Kerik goes back to the ironing board. Terrorism may have helped win an election, but it’s all low priority now.
None of this makes the next four years a kinder, gentler time; least of all a more competent one. But it isn’t the irresistible force of instant legend; it isn’t a masterful George and obedient servants. It is Donald and Dick and Johnny and Condi. It is a curse beyond nanny, the curse of exhaustion and ambition and greed and hard calculation. — Â