Page 2 of 2 DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Bullish days for loyal ex-Bushies
By Nick Turse
confidential assistant to the controller for the White House Office of
Management and Budget in Washington, DC," while Karen Yeager, a Dutko vice
president, "serve[d] in the White House for president Bush in 2001".
Spin-mistresses
Karen Hughes helped Bush get elected in 2000 and, for the first two years of
his first term, served him as a "counselor." In 2002, she left the White House
to spend more time with her family in Texas. In 2004, however, she was back at
work on Bush's campaign and then, in 2005, signed on as an undersecretary of
state. In 2007, she left again, the White House said, "to spend more time with
her family". Nonetheless, in 2008, she was in an
office yet again, this time as Global Vice Chair at public relations giant
Burson-Marsteller. In 2009, she was joined there by former White House press
secretary Dana Perino, who now serves as Chief Issues Counselor for the company
in the US.
Here, too, Michael Chertoff has gotten into the act. The announcement of the
formation of the Chertoff Group, wrote the Wall Street Journal, "was made by
the communications firm Burson-Marsteller, which said it formed an alliance
with Mr Chertoff".
Board to death
Bush administration officials have also been popping up on various boards of
directors. Richard Armitage is perhaps typical. He sits on the board at
military-corporate complex member ManTech International. He also serves on the
boards of oil giant ConocoPhillips, "pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical" company
Transcu Ltd, and his own firm, Armitage International, which, according to its
website, provides "multinational clients with critical support in the areas of
international business development, strategic planning, and problem-solving".
In April, chemical giant DuPont announced that Samuel Bodman, secretary of
energy from 2005-2009 (and before that, deputy secretary of the Treasury,
2004-2005, and deputy secretary of the Department of Commerce, 2001-2004) had
been elected to its board of directors.
That same month, former CIA chief Michael Hayden became a member of the board
of directors of the National Interest Security Company, an "information
technology, information management, and management technology consulting
services" provider serving the US intelligence community and the Departments of
Defense, Homeland Security, and Energy. There, Hayden joined fellow former
administration cronies Henry A Crumpton (coordinator for counter-terrorism at
the State Department, 2005-2007) and Donald Kerr (principal deputy director of
National Intelligence, 2007-2009).
Meanwhile, Andrew Card not only serves on the board of directors of railroad
giant Union Pacific, but has also turned up on the board of directors of the
George W Bush Presidential Library Foundation.
In the tank
If you can't get a gig at a law firm, a PR agency, or on a corporate board of
directors, there are always the nation's think-tanks to fall back into and
they've become a shelter for more than a few Bush administration refugees in
the Obama era. For example, after serving as a deputy assistant to the
president and deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration,
Elliott Abrams has now joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as senior
fellow for Middle Eastern studies.
Alongside Abrams at CFR are a number of officials who served during the Bush
years, including Evan Feigenbaum, former deputy assistant secretary of state
for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives; Paul Lettow, former
senior adviser to the under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs
and the senior director for strategic planning and institutional reform on the
National Security Council staff; and Dan Senor, an administration foreign
policy advisor and senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in
Iraq.
Meanwhile, the conservative Heritage Foundation is not surprisingly housing a
large contingent of Bush loyalists, including Becky Norton Dunlop, who served
as the chairperson of the Federal Services Impasse Panel (which handles
disputes between government agencies and labor unions); Kim R Holmes, assistant
secretary of state for international organization affairs; Terry Miller,
ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council; Peter Brookes,
deputy assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs; and Mike
Gonzalez who, in 2005, left the Wall Street Journal to join the Bush
administration where, according to his Heritage Foundation bio, he "wrote
speeches for Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox, then
moved to the State Department in 2006 as communications adviser and speech
writer on European and Eurasian affairs" and even "helped craft an op-ed column
... which appeared throughout Europe under the bylines of secretary of state
Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates."
Ivory tower power
While Gates stayed on to work for Obama, Rice is pursuing many different career
paths. In addition to the lucrative book contracts and the speakers bureau
gigs, she inked a deal for the William Morris Agency to represent her for
"business initiatives in media, sports and communications". Rice also returned,
as a professor of political science, to her old stomping grounds at Stanford
University, where she had long taught and also, from 1993-1999, served as
provost. Presumably in her spare time, she serves as the Thomas and Barbara
Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford's conservative Hoover
Institution.
Rice is actually following in the footsteps of Rumsfeld who served a stint,
beginning in 2007, as "a distinguished visiting fellow" at the Hoover
Institution. But Stanford is hardly the only academic bastion of former
Bushites. For example, this year, John Negroponte headed back to his old alma
mater, Yale University, to become the "Brady-Johnson Distinguished Senior
Research Fellow in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in International Affairs at the
Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies."
"Torture memo" author John Yoo, who served as deputy assistant attorney general
in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice from 2001-2003, is,
of course, a professor of law at the School of Law of that bastion of leftist
radicalism, the University of California at Berkeley. (As Liliana Segura of
AlterNet recently reported, he also just landed a gig as a columnist for the
Philadelphia Inquirer.)
Hope on the horizon
Last year, for many Americans, Obama became synonymous with hope. (And last
year, Obama's The Audacity of Hope as well as his Dreams from My Father
earned him an eye-popping $2.4 million in royalties.) This year, for struggling
job-hunters nationwide, it's former Bush administration officials who offer a
glimmer of hope in tough economic times.
Even Cheney, a man about whom 55% of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion, has
realistic prospects of receiving a multi-million dollar book deal. After all,
his former boss is viewed unfavorably by 57% of Americans and look how he's
done.
Since most jobless Americans don't have nearly the unfavorable polling numbers
of Bush or Cheney, nor do they face the distant threat of possible war crimes
prosecutions like Yoo, they should perk up. Maybe the problem is that none of
them have signed up with the right speakers' bureau to discuss their disastrous
life circumstances. Maybe they haven't had that extra little bit of help
tweaking their book proposals for their proposed tell-littles and tell-nones.
Maybe they hadn't thought to check with Burson-Marsteller, just in case a few
top slots with grandiose titles are still open. Maybe the Hoover Institution
will now extend distinguished visiting fellowships to a few of the residents of
modern-day Hoovervilles.
With only former attorney general Gonzales still out of work, grant the men and
women of the Bush administration one thing: the best unemployment rate in the
land. In but a few short months, they've managed to prove that those
inside-the-Beltway never have to tighten a belt.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the recent
winner of a Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James
Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. A
paperback edition of his book,
The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives(Metropolitan
Books), an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, has
recently been published. His website is Nick Turse.com.
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