Kevin Collins: Long line of Bush whistleblowers revealing

It would take some concerted effort on your part not to have heard by now former counterterrorism chief Dick Clarke (no, not the New Year's guy) and his insider's critique of the Bush administration's failing war on terror. But, to be brief, Clarke has argued that the administration paid insufficient attention to the al Qaeda threat before Sept. 11 as well as after, thanks to an overwhelming obsession with invading Iraq. However, Clarke's claims come only as the latest in a long line of insider revelations about the lack of an honest and effective policy wing of the White House, where political considerations reign supreme.

There was Richard Foster, the Medicare official who was muzzled (with the threat of losing his job) from revealing to Congress the true costs of Bush's Medicare legislation. There was former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who described Bush in Cabinet meetings as "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," detached from the policy his administration produced.

In 2003, a leaked first draft of a government report on air pollution showed how the White House censored sections on the consequences of global warming for human health and the environment, only to be followed now in 2004 by revelations that they have consistently downplayed the toxic effects of the mercury pollution. Why? Such details looked bad politically.

And this dynamic was in play as early as the first year of the administration, when John DiIulio, a Penn professor and one-time head of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, quit the administration in disgust. "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of policy apparatus," DiIulio said in a 2003 Esquire article. "What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Clearly, Clarke's allegations are representative of a much larger problem: President Bush may be a very good politician, but he is a terrible policy-maker. By this, I do not just mean that his policies are bad. Rather, the picture drawn for the public by one-time insiders is of policy that is made for its perceived political benefits for the president instead of for any perceived benefit for America; of policy that does not receive the necessary careful scrutiny by experts in the appropriate field as it would in prior administrations, Democrat and Republican alike; of policy over which Karl Rove and company have final authority.

But why this great departure from past procedures? I propose that the nature of Bush's policy-making is a function of both his development as a politician and of our modern media. In college, Bush was not an honor roll student but was president of his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon. His only previous political office -- that of Texas governor -- is, according to veteran Texas political journalist Molly Ivins, merely the fifth most powerful position in the state government. This is to say, in Austin, Bush was a figurehead politician, but not policy-maker in chief. It is hardly surprising that he brought that pattern to Washington.

However, Bush is even more a product of our soundbite culture. If there ever was an Information Age in American politics, it is surely in the past. While we now have unprecedented access to information, our super-saturated media environment makes it ever more difficult to absorb any of it. As a simple contrast, when Bush's father was seeking re-election, there was only one 24- hour news channel. Now, there are five, and we have the World Wide Web to boot. This news cycle eats alive those policy wonks who delve into details.

Before we can digest any image, argument or factoid, the next has materialized on the screen in front of us. As the breadth of information available becomes infinite, the depth shrinks to zero. What we have now is not an Information Age, but an Infographic Age. These colored diagrams that proliferate across television and newspapers best embody the limits of the complexity of the political information our society consumes today.

This is also a perfect match for Bush's prioritization of style over substance. The administration can get away with ignoring important policy details -- inherent in their political style -- because the public will, too. Until, that is, Bush's own advisers blow the whistle on the dereliction of his policy-making duty.

The effects of Bush's poorly thought out policy abound, and our generation will suffer more than any other for it.

Politicized estimates of Medicare endanger its future not just for our old age but by the time of our 40s, and while the impacts of Bush's neglect of the environment may not be seen in his lifetime, they will drastically affect the way we and our children will lead our lives. And the troops dying in Iraq because of inadequate pre-war planning for the occupation? They are the same age as you and me.

One can only hope that before November, John Kerry can strike the necessary balance between intelligent, nuanced policy and media-friendly politics. Otherwise, the question won't be if another whistleblower will emerge.

The question will be when.

Kevin Collins is a sophomore political science major from Milwaukee, Wis. ...And Justice For All appears on Mondays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.