Conservatives cheered and Democrats rushed to the microphone to condemn Bush for turning his back on the country’s civil-rights agenda. Few expected the president to be so bold in tackling a racially sensitive issue so soon after his party’s anguish over Trent Lott. If a thoughtless birthday reminiscence about the good old days could provoke a firestorm, why would Bush invite another fight about race?
Bush took a hard-line stance for reasons both principled and political. It’s what he believes. He did the same thing as governor and he won: the Texas university system’s affirmative-action policies were overturned. Second, he’s convinced that attacking what he calls the University of Michigan’s “unfair quota system” won’t hurt him politically and may be a major asset because it puts the Democrats on the defensive. The White House calculates that Democrats will overreach on the issue. Bush gets credit for political courage because of his stand even though this issue is more divisive for Democrats than Republicans.
Michigan is the home of Macomb County, a blue-collar community that gave rise to the phenomenon of Reagan Democrats, working-class whites who had abandoned the party because they thought Democrats cared more about minorities. Affirmative action was one of the flash points. Bill Clinton won them back by promising broad benefits like health-care coverage. When the courts chipped away at affirmative action, President Clinton salvaged what he could with an approach dubbed “mend it; don’t end it.”
Solicitor General Ted Olson and conservatives at the Justice Department pushed the White House for a broad assault against affirmative action. “They wanted to go hard and fast,” says an administration official. Political advisor Karl Rove and White House counselor Alberto Gonzales favored a more nuanced approach, and apparently prevailed. “This was a battle between people who have an ear for these things and understand reality and the folks at Justice who want to reshape the world,” says the official.
The Supreme Court will rule no later than June, so we will have an answer in five months about the legality of the Michigan admissions process. There is some confusion about how far the Bush brief goes in challenging the architecture of affirmative action. The court is unlikely to uphold all the particulars of the Michigan programs, but court watchers believe it will affirm diversity as a legitimate government interest in developing admission plans. Bush praised diversity in his public comments this week and portrayed the Michigan admissions system as an aberration that should be declared unconstitutional. But lawyer Ron Klain, who oversaw Al Gore’s post-2000 election legal challenge, argues that Bush can’t escape from the logic of his argument. If the Michigan program falls, so will affirmative action at most universities because they are virtually indistinguishable from one another.
Democrats attentive to rural and suburban white voters have tried to finesse the issue. But there’s no ducking it now. Former House leader and presidential candidate Richard Gephardt, a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, has filed an amicus brief supporting his alma mater. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and the other Democrats in the race will have to follow, each outdoing the other while the White House politicos sit back and savor the spectacle.
Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who announced his presidential candidacy early this week, was once an opponent of affirmative action. No more. He was one of the first to attack Bush’s position.
It’s tempting to write the story that Bush is catering to conservative pressure in the wake of the Trent Lott episode, but Bush needed no persuading to get on this bandwagon. Condoleezza Rice, his national-security adviser, sat in on the discussions. She rose from modest means in Alabama to become provost of Stanford University and an adviser to two presidents. Bush listens to her, and she is no fan of affirmative action. “She wants people to know she got there because of her,” says a White House colleague.
Then there’s the question of votes. The black vote is pretty much lost to the GOP anyway. And blue-collar Democrats, who say affirmative action is one of the reasons they vote for Republicans, live in states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the battleground for 2004. “In raw political terms, Bush benefits from this,” says a Senate Republican. The soccer moms Rove worries about are filling out college applications, and they don’t want their kid edged out because of some perceived wrong. Every parent knows a horror story that pits an upper-middle-class black kid against a poor white kid. “That’s why it’s a loser politically for Democrats,” says a Republican strategist. “Nassau, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester–those are the counties where a state like New York is won.”
Not everybody agrees that this is smart politics for the GOP. Klain, for one, thinks Bush has overreached, and if the Supreme Court with its conservative record upholds diversity as a legitimate government interest, Bush will be on the defensive, not the Democrats. By forcefully entering the Michigan case, Bush has made it clear what outcome he wants to see, placing his trust once again in the court to assure his political future.
