Scandal stalls Bush's second term

There is a whiff of decay surrounding the incumbent Republican Party, writes Washington correspondent Geoff Elliott
October 01, 2005

THIS has been a bad week for George W. Bush and the Republican Party. His powerbroker in Congress, Tom DeLay, a man they call "The Hammer" for his ability to ram through legislation, was charged on one count of criminal conspiracy in Texas relating to an alleged campaign finance scam. He has been forced to step down as Republican leader of the lower house under congressional rules but denies any wrongdoing, saying the prosecutor in Texas, a Democrat, is an "unabashed partisan zealot".

In the Senate, Republican leader Bill Frist fronted the media this week to defend himself against allegations of insider trading, after selling a portfolio of shares in a family-owned healthcare company just weeks before its share price plunged after a profit warning. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating.

Frist also denies any wrongdoing, saying the shares were in a blind trust. He says he directed the trustee to sell, ironically as it turns out, to try to avoid any perceptions of a conflict of interest. He says he welcomes the probe to clear the air.

Meanwhile, there's the continuing investigation into influential lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a former close associate of DeLay, over allegations of a breathtaking scam in which he was said to have defrauded $US80 million from Native American tribes who manage casinos on reservations.

Last week the White House's senior procurement officer David Safavian had to resign after being arrested in connection with the Abramoff probe.

There is also an investigation into a possible leak from the White House of a CIA agent's name, with some of the evidence so far pointing to the President's most influential aide Karl Rove, although Rove denies being the source.

Then there's Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, who is under investigation for the sale of his home to a Pentagon contractor at an inflated price, a highly dubious transaction given his role on a congressional budget committee overseeing the Department of Defence.

Add to that Bush's approval rating at record lows, growing public disapproval for the war in Iraq, soaring petrol prices and Bush's inadequate response to the devastating Hurricane Katrina and you have the ingredients for a swamped second-term agenda and the potential for a voter backlash building for next year's mid-term elections.

Allegations of sleaze and wobbly ethics have long been a powerful political weapon, wielded effectively by Republicans 10 years ago against the Clinton administration. It helped the Republican Party cement its control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and, under DeLay, a former Texas cockroach exterminator, the party has expanded those gains.

Democrats, something of a rabble trying to be a unified voice in the US, now find themselves, inadvertently, taking their pick at what appears to be a veritable cache of weaponry to fire at the Bush administration. DeLay's Democratic counterpart in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, says the charges against DeLay are "the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued with a culture of corruption".

As William Kristof, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, says: "Even though DeLay has nothing to do with Frist and Frist has nothing to do with Abramoff, how does it look? Not good." And conservative newspaper The Wall Street Journal wrote in its editorial in May that there was an odour about DeLay, "an unsavoury whiff" that could claim his career.

"Even before yesterday, Mr DeLay was seriously weakened as a political force," the editorial said. "And for that he has himself partly to blame. Our disagreement with the majority leader is that, as the [Republican Party] cemented itself in power, he let incumbency become more important than the principles that elected him."

DeLay, in typical style, blasted Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle, saying he was engaging in "personal revenge" because of his success at building a Republican majority in Texas. "I have the facts, the law and the truth on my side. Let me be very, very clear: I have done nothing wrong. I have violated no law, no regulation, no rule of the house. I am innocent."

It's widely agreed the evidence for the charge against DeLay looks thin. The four-page indictment presents little detail on how DeLay was involved in allegedly channelling $US190,000 of corporate donations to Republicans running in state elections in Texas in 2002. But before the charge DeLay had already been accused by both sides of politics of cronyism. And, despite a conspiracy charge being very difficult to prove, this week is a severe blow for DeLay because under the house rules he has had to step down.

DeLay's woes this year have meant he has been distracted from the main game -- enforcing Bush's legislative platform -- and that could partly explain the President's stalled second term. Bush's big-ticket item was reforming the US's bankrupt pension system. He spent plenty of political capital travelling around the country trying to sell the plan but it has fallen flat.

It's too early to say if DeLay's departure -- he says it will be temporary, while others say even if proven innocent his days as a powerbroker and fundraiser in Washington are over -- will help Democrats prise open further the fissures that exist in the Republican Party that DeLay did so well to hold together in Congress.

"Tom DeLay was like Tito in Yugoslavia," James Thurber, a professor of government at American University told The Washington Post. "He ruled with fear and also resources to reward people. Now, without DeLay, the house will be Balkanised."

Already, the fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party have started to rebel at the open-ended commitments Bush has made to reconstruction in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

And that comes on top of a core of fiscal conservatives in Washington who want to see the budget deficit addressed through deep spending cuts. Congress has only just passed Bush's $US290 billion ($380 billion) highway bill which, according to some estimates, is flush with about $US24 billion of pork, such as a $US200 million bridge to a community of about 50 people in Alaska so they can have access to a local airport.

The good news for Bush is that these fault lines and allegations of sleaze and scandal could have come at a worse time, such as a few months before next November's mid-term congressional elections.

DeLay looks confident he'll be cleared and maybe there will be time to recover from the political damage that has been done if he is exonerated. But his predicament thrills Democrats, since he was the man who pushed Congress to impeach Clinton in 1998.

Frist, who hinted this week he was preparing to run as a presidential candidate in 2008, looks confident the insider trading allegation will be cleared soon. He says his staff consulted at length with the outside counsel and a Senate ethics committee to ensure he was legally able to sell his stock.

But for now the whiff of scandal is sucking the oxygen out of Bush's second term. And for a President at war, trying to win the hearts and minds of Iraq and the Middle East generally, being increasingly distracted at home is a dangerous thing.

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