1.

NEW WH POLICY CHIEF WAS BROOKS BROTHERS RIOTER
By Justin Rood

TPMmuckraker.com
April 19, 2006

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000416.php

To the Burberry ramparts!

The man Bush tapped to fill Karl Rove's spot as his policy wizard is none other than Joel Kaplan, who took part in the infamous "Brooks Brothers riot" of 2000. That's when a bunch of Washington GOP operatives, posing as outraged Floridians, waved fists, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and pounded windows in an effort to intimidate officials engaged in the Florida recount effort.

In George Bush's Washington, there's no shame in staging a fake protest to undermine a democratic election, apparently: last year, the Washington Post's Al Kamen noted that "the "rioters" proudly note their participation on resumes and in interviews." Kaplan was even the one to cheekily dub the fracas the "Brooks Brothers Riot."

2.

Politics

Bush Administration

Analysis

WHITE HOUSE SHIFTS INTO SURVIVAL MODE
By Don Balz

Washington Post
April 20, 2006
Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902517.html

In a White House known for both defiance and optimism, yesterday's senior staff changes represent a frank acknowledgment of the trouble in which President Bush now finds himself. They are also a signal of how starkly Bush's second-term ambitions have shifted after a year of persistent problems at home and abroad.

Longtime Bush confidant Karl Rove -- who had hoped to use his position of deputy chief of staff to usher in an expansive conservative agenda -- was relieved of his policy portfolio to concentrate on long-term strategy and planning for a November midterm election that looks increasingly bleak for Republicans.

Rove probably will remain one of the most influential voices in the White House, but his shift in responsibilities suggests that new White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten intends to operate a different White House than his predecessor, Andrew H. Card Jr., who resigned after more than five years at the helm.

Bolten's White House, say former administration officials and Republican strategists, is likely to have clearer lines of authority and less free-lancing by powerful officials. They also expect Bolten to play a more active and influential role in shaping domestic policy than did Card.

More significantly, they said, unlike Card, who took as his principal responsibility the management of the president, Bolten probably will operate more in the mold of chiefs of staffs in previous administrations, who saw their role as managing the entire White House and sought to oversee the entire federal government, as well.

Whether the changes will fundamentally alter a troubled administration is another question. One of Bolten's biggest challenges, administration allies say, will be to find ways to open up the Oval Office to new ideas and to the opinions of people who are not longtime Bush confidants.

On that score, many people who know the administration best are privately dubious. Presidents, more than chiefs of staff, determine how White Houses operate, they said, noting that Bush has shown that he prefers a tight circle of advisers and does not welcome the advice of outsiders. As Bush put it on Monday, in asserting that he would not fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, "I'm the decider, and I decide what's best."

Rove's return to a role that closely mirrors that which he played in Bush's first term demonstrates how much this White House has now shifted to survival mode -- and how far events have pushed the president from the grand ambitions with which he opened his second term just 15 months ago.

Then, with Rove as the animating force, the president sought to engineer Republican political dominance by remaking government with such far-reaching initiatives as his plan to remake the Social Security program. Today, Social Security stands as Exhibit A of what went wrong domestically in 2005.

Public disillusionment over Bush's policies in Iraq have left the country in a sour mood and Bush's presidency at low ebb, threatening the entire Bush-Rove project to create a durable Republican majority. While that goal remains central to those closest to Bush, the focus at the White House for the foreseeable future will be trying to revitalize this presidency quickly enough to avoid crippling GOP losses in November that could thrust Bush into instant lame-duck status.

Realigning the White House staff and bringing in new faces appear central to that effort. This week's changes include yesterday's resignation of White House press secretary Scott McClellan and appointment of Joel D. Kaplan as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, as well as Monday's announcement that U.S. trade representative and former House member Rob Portman will succeed Bolten as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The domestic policy process has been hampered since Bolten went to OMB, and one Republican strategist close to the White House said the new chief of staff appears bent on trying to prevent Rove and others from interfering in every aspect of the governing process.

Rove will retain the "gravitational force" of his Bush relationship and could "overpower" Bolten in showdowns because he knows the president and the inside game better, this official predicted. But he added that Bolten believed that the strategy to overhaul Social Security was sloppy and hampered by Rove's becoming too involved in every aspect of the campaign -- policy, politics, and communications.

Former administration officials said that Rove, though known for his ability to juggle many roles, was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of his responsibilities when he was promoted to deputy chief of staff after the 2004 election.

In addition, he was engulfed in the CIA leak case. He is believed to be under investigation by a special counsel for providing false testimony about his role.

Bolten and Rove forged a congenial working relationship during Bush's first presidential campaign, when Rove was chief strategist and Bolten chief policy adviser. That carried over into the White House during the first term, until Bolten departed as deputy chief of staff to take over as OMB director. Administration allies say they hope that the new assignments can restore an operating arrangement that they believe worked well.

One former administration official, who asked not to be identified in order to speak freely about his former colleagues, called yesterday's shift in Rove's responsibilities a "huge" development. "This is putting back things where they belong," he said. "It's given Josh back policy. Joel [Kaplan] is a total Josh disciple, and he is very good in the policy world. It focuses Karl back on politics, which is what he needs to do."

But former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said Rove's losing the policy portfolio also is significant, because the policy job "is where ideas comes from, where creativity comes from, and that is where presidents rise and fall."

"I think this is another building block in bringing in other voices to reenergize and reinvigorate the West Wing," said Kenneth Duberstein, White House chief of staff to president Ronald Reagan, who predicted Rove will remain one of Bush's most trusted aides.

Despite his power, Rove has not been immune to criticism. Inside the White House, some aides were unhappy that he had sent McClellan out to say inaccurately that Rove had no involvement in the CIA leak case. Outside allies feared that Rove was so invested in the policies he had helped to shape and sell to Bush that he lost his ability to see where the administration had gotten off track.

Mindful that Rove's changed responsibilities might be seen as a demotion, administration officials and allies offered a counterview, saying that, given his personal relationship with the president, he will continue to exercise wide influence on policy and politics while having new freedom to think more strategically about the administration.

Other changes are expected at the White House and perhaps in Bush's Cabinet. One will be a replacement for McClellan; another is likely to be a new domestic policy adviser. Criticisms of the legislative affairs and communications operations as well as the national economic council suggest the potential scope of changes. But one of the most important steps came yesterday. As one strategist who has worked closely with the administration put it, "I don't know how you change the White House without changing Karl's role."

--Staff writer Jim VandeHei contributed to this report.

3.

BUSH GAVE PLUM JOBS TO SUPPORTERS WHO WORKED RECOUNT (or BUSH RECOUNT TROOPS LAND PLUM D.C. JOBS)
By Carol Rosenberg

Miami Herald
July 14, 2002
Page A1

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=7354&mode=&order=0
or
http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/politics/3657764.htm (subscription required)

MIAMI -- John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, caused a stir in May by accusing the Cuban government of transferring bioweapons technology to rogue nations. Nineteen months ago, he caused a different stir -- bursting into a Tallahassee library on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign to stop a recount of Miami-Dade County ballots.

Matt Schlapp, a former congressional aide, is currently White House special assistant to the president and deputy director of political affairs. In November 2000, he was part of the supposedly spontaneous window-pounding protest at Miami-Dade County Hall that brought to an end the first recount of Miami-Dade ballots.

Sue Cobb, a Coral Gables developer, today is the U.S. ambassador to Jamaica. Twenty months ago, the generous Republican donor volunteered her legal skills to the Bush-Cheney campaign -- working as part of the legal team that contested recounts in Miami-Dade.

Although they now serve President George W. Bush in sharply different roles, the three share a common experience. They are among more than 50 political appointees found by the Miami Herald to have served as troops in the frantic Florida recount battle that followed the Nov. 7, 2000, election.

Political patronage has long been a reward for campaign loyalty. But the distribution of plum jobs to those who worked in Florida after the 2000 election suggests that that service became a kind of political merit badge that carried a special benefit.

"Work on the recount is the indispensable connection for work at the Bush administration," said Jeffrey Toobin, author of Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election.

Just how many Bush appointees actually served the Bush-Cheney campaign here is not clear. The White House declined to provide a list of who in the administration actually worked for the campaign in Florida. Florida lawyer Barry Richard, a Democrat who was hired by the Bush campaign to fight its legal battle over the recount, said there were 192 lawyers of record on various court cases around the state.

To identify the appointees, the Miami Herald conducted dozens of interviews and studied White House nominations and government staff directories -- then matched names to news accounts, photo captions, and several books about the episode. In addition, some appointees included their recount roles in news releases, or accounts in university and law journals.

Most were lawyers who worked all-nighters in Tallahassee and across South Florida as ballot observers and political operatives as well as litigators and behind-the-scenes writers of legal briefs.

White House officials defended the appointments, noting that many appointees take big pay cuts when they move into government jobs. Appointees with Florida service to the Bush-Cheney recount effort make from $52,300 a year to $166,700 for Attorney General John Ashcroft, who also passed through Tallahassee during the recount.

"The finest legal minds in the country were brought in on both sides," said White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo. "It's only logical that an administration would tap some of those same bright minds to hold legal positions throughout the administration."

Mamo, a former Capitol Hill press secretary who now earns $62,760, was among those who came to Florida for the recount. Already with the Bush-Cheney campaign, she worked as part of the GOP's media team. Other GOP press aides who went from the Florida recount to the White House include Nicolle Devenish, Tucker Eskew, Ken Lisaius, and Scott McClellan.

Several of the people who served as political operatives and attorneys said there was no explicit quid pro quo in their decision to come to Florida to do battle with the forces of Democratic candidates Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. But they also acknowledged that the service helped them draw the attention of the Bush team.

Lawyer R. Ted Cruz, a Bush-Cheney campaign worker and former clerk to U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, arrived in Tallahassee for the first time in his life within 24 hours of the election to work on briefs. He became part of an early inner circle that included more nationally prominent Republican lawyers, such as George J.Terwilliger III and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, who had been an outside counsel to the campaign.

"It did give an opportunity for lawyers who had been supporting Bush to shine, to demonstrate what they were capable of," Cruz said. "On a day-to-day basis, a campaign does not deal with senior constitutional litigators that often. It was an opportunity for the senior people on the campaign to see first-hand the abilities of these lawyers."

Today Cruz is director of policy and planning at the Federal Trade Commission, earning $138,200. Earlier, he did a stint as a Bush administration lawyer at the Justice Department, working on the transition to Ashcroft from former Attorney General Janet Reno.

Bolton, the U.S. diplomat now responsible for arms control issues, said no payoff was promised for his decision to join the post-election fray. He had worked for the first Bush administration and, finding himself in South Korea on election night, contacted former Secretary of State James Baker in Texas to see how he might lend a hand. The reply: Go to Florida.

"I think, frankly, most of the people who did it just went down there by instinct," Bolton said. He said he received no legal fees, although the campaign paid his hotel bills and other expenses.

Bolton was part of the legal team and a ballot observer in Palm Beach County. Then he rushed to Tallahassee as the recount battle reached higher courts.

It was his role, on a Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, to burst into a library where workers were recounting Miami-Dade ballots to relay news of the U.S. Supreme Court's stay in the on-again, off-again presidential recount. "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count," he was quoted as saying in news reports at the time.

The Florida fraternity included major figures in the Bush administration, notably Theodore Olson, the current solicitor general, who worked on the case in both Tallahassee and Miami, then argued candidate Bush's case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Robert Zoellick, now the U.S. trade representative, who served as a virtual chief of staff to Baker, Bush's main Florida strategist.

But there are many whose roles in Florida went largely unremarked at the time:

-- Five lawyers who did research and wrote briefs to fight Florida court challenges are now deputies in the White House counsel's office.

-- Three senior strategists in Tallahassee now hold $130,000-a-year jobs as general counsels to Cabinet departments: David D. Aufhauser, now at Treasury, who supervised a unit of lawyers that ran Bush's military and overseas ballot campaign; Alex M. Azar, now at Health and Human Services, who was part of the so-called "revolving brain trust" that tackled different legal theories in Tallahassee; and Kirk Van Tine, now at Transportation, who came from Baker's Texas law firm, Baker Botts, to run a war room of bright young lawyers who cranked out various motions.

--Three members of the window-pounding crowd that on Thanksgiving Eve helped persuade the Miami-Dade County canvassing board to abandon the recount are now members of the White House staff: Matt Schlapp, now a special assistant to the president; Garry Malphrus, deputy director of the president's Domestic Policy Council; and Joel Kaplan, also a special assistant to the president.

Schlapp and Malphrus, both of whom declined to talk to the Herald, were first identified in 2000 in the Washington Post as part of the Miami-Dade demonstration. Kaplan described his role in a lecture at the Harvard University Institute of Politics, calling the demonstration the "Brooks Brothers Protest," a reference to the way the demonstrators were dressed.

-- Former Texas Transportation System Chairman David Laney left his Austin law firm to serve as a ballot recount observer in Volusia County. Bush appointed him recently to the seven-member Amtrak Board of Directors, a federal post touted by Laney's firm as a "leadership role in the transportation arena." It has no salary but pays a per diem and travel expenses.

-- Kevin Martin, now a $130,000-a-year commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, was one of the first national Bush-Cheney people to arrive in Miami from Washington, on Nov. 8. He had been a deputy general counsel for the Bush campaign and before that worked for Ken Starr, the independent counsel in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

-- New York lawyer Brad Blakeman, who helped organize protests in South Florida and appeared in one Associated Press dispatch at the time as a "Broward County GOP volunteer," today is director of White House scheduling.

-- Associate Deputy Attorney General Stuart A. Levey represented Bush-Cheney in Martin County. He was with Baker's Texas law firm at the time.

-- Boca Raton developer Ned L. Siegel, long a generous GOP donor, has been nominated by Bush to serve as a director of the Overseas Private Investment Corp. During the recount crisis, he sued Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore in a bid to stop the manual recount of the troubled butterfly ballots on constitutional grounds.

-- Private lawyer Marcos Jimenez joined the Bush-Cheney legal team in Florida and is now awaiting confirmation as U.S. attorney for Florida's Southern District. His brother, Frank, took two weeks of unpaid leave from his job as acting general counsel to Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, to assist the Bush-Cheney campaign in the recount battle. He was recently tapped to become chief of staff for U.S. Housing Secretary Mel Martinez of Orlando.

-- Miami lawyer Mark Wallace, who fought on behalf of the GOP in Palm Beach County during the butterfly ballot brouhaha, is today acting general counsel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, run by Joe Allbaugh, the Bush-Cheney campaign manager.

Many of the lawyers who worked in Florida are members of the Federalist Society, a network of legal conservatives who, in a string of telephone calls, summoned former Supreme Court clerks and other experts to Florida.

Barry Richard, the Democrat from the Greenberg, Traurig law firm who was hired for the recount by the Bush-Cheney campaign, said he is not surprised that the path to posts in the Bush administration wound through Florida.

"The less cynical way and probably more legitimate way to see this is that the reason these people are around Bush is because he thought they were good at what they did," Richard said.

"Almost all the individuals who went into the administration -- maybe all of them -- were involved in the Bush campaign during the campaign itself and were also longtime participants with the Republican Party. And I think that probably their involvement with the administration was not related to their participation in the litigation itself but their connection to the Bush team."

As for his own role in the recount, Richard said no one ever suggested that his work would win him a Bush administration post.

"Nobody offered me anything," he said, "and I never expressed any interest in anything."