The Reason Why

On Friday, my program went to the Old Executive Office Building, right next to the White House, to meet with Barry Jackson. Barry is the Assistant Deputy to the President and the Principal Deputy to the Senior Advisor. The Senior Advisor being Karl Rove. That is a roundabout way of saying he's Karl Rove's go-to-guy. We met in a conference room right next to the Indian Treaty Room where Dwight Eisenhower held the first ever televised press conference. If nothing else, it was nice to feel important enough to have an appointment in this place.

Barry sat us down and told us a bit about his job in the White House. While he was describing his position, the sound of a helicopter interrupted Barry's baritone. Barry stopped speaking and told us to go to the window because Marine One (the President's helicopter) was about to take off. Sure enough, Marine One was sitting on the South Lawn of the White House waiting for the President to board. Bush was going to Kansas to stump for Senator Pat Roberts. It was a pleasant interruption, to say the least.

We were then afforded time to ask Barry questions. Of course other people asked questions, but this blog is about me, so I'm going to talk about my question. (Selfish, no?) As you may have noticed, the immigration debate has been on my mind as of late and I wanted Barry's take on it, being as close to the action as he is. I asked his take on Karl Rove's strategy to attract more Hispanics to the Republican Party in order to establish a permanent Republican majority and if he thought his party's dissent on immigration damaged the achievement of that goal. Barry quickly pointed out that the strategy was designed not only for Hispanics but for other minority groups too, namely African-Americans.

Barry then took my question to a very broad scale. He initially ignored the immigration focus of my question in favor of a broad-spectrum look at Bush's policies. He argued that Bush has done more for minorities in this country than any president in recent history. The president's Prescription Drug Bill, he continued, did much to assuage low-income minority seniors of the rising cost of prescribed pills. No Child Left Behind's primary focus was the reconciliation of the "achievement gap" between whites and minorities. It has shed a spotlight on minority underachievement in our public schools and has begun the process of reconciling it. Then he came around to immigration and said that the president has been the torch-bearer for legalization and the guest worker program that does nothing but help immigrants and working minorities in this country. He concluded by saying that his party's defiance of the president on this issue will most certainly hurt them in the long run.

Barry Jackson had just argued that President Bush was the czar of minority rights. My first reaction was: well, we're obviously not counting gays as a minority in this conversation, but then I was struck by something. Barry had just articulated 6 years of Bush policy in ten minutes and it made sense to me. One of my teachers at my program in DC has taught us that every campaign needs a message, or put another way: a reason why. Bush's policies had always seemed from the hip to me. Sure, he tackled big questions like education, but what was his driving motive? How did his education policy connect to his health care plans? What was his reason why? Barry Jackson, whether purposefully or not, had stumbled upon it. Bush's reason why was to level the playing field for minorities. Of course, this seems hard to fathom for some liberals, but it makes sense if you contemplate it enough.

Regardless of ones policy disagreements with NCLB or Medicare Part D (I have some of my own), it is striking to hear a connecting tenet between those policies. If Bush had articulated this message for the past 6 years then his immigration policy would not seem as hollow. He would be able to back up his immigration beliefs with legislative achievements. I think the hardest thing for Bush is that his message is not a conservative one: government regulated education, massive health care spending and amnesty. Oops, I said amnesty (at least, that's what "true" conservatives would call it). As much as liberals rail on Bush for being a right-ist, his legislative achievement speak differently. Big-government conservatism, anyone?

Anyway, I just went off for a while there. This is about Barry Jackson! Barry blames the media (a conservative pastime) for not allowing Bush a window to present an uncensored message, but I don't buy it. In campaign terms, Bush is excellent at one thing: staying on message. It's the reason he twice won this country's highest office. I just think he should have picked a clearer message that articulated his reason why.

-Wyatt Earp