Jockeying Begins as Bush Eyes Cabinet Changes

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON – As the president and his top advisers begin planning how they will govern for a second term, competition within the Republican Party and his administration is intensifying to fill top slots that will likely come open in 2005.


Republican insiders expect that Secretary of State Powell, Attorney General Ashcroft, and the director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, will leave the administration in the near future. Meanwhile, administration officials tell The New York Sun that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has indicated to his senior staff that he plans to stick around for a second term.


“If Rummy is leaving, he showed no signs of it,” an administration source said. “He has been assigning aides projects he wants completed in 2005.”


The anticipated departures have left Washington abuzz on how the president will shape his new Cabinet. Whom the president will choose for his chief law enforcement official, top diplomat, and Homeland Security tsar will signal what policies take priority for the leader of a Republican Party deeply divided on questions of international security and fiscal discipline.


Should President Bush conclude that he must restore America’s relations with the international community and balance the budget, he will likely look to advisers that closely resemble those that surrounded his father. The problem, however, is that many of those figures, such as a former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, have been openly hostile to the Iraq war that the president defended repeatedly on the campaign trail.


“I think we heard in Bush’s acceptance today that he is firm on his commitment to assisting those in the Middle East and elsewhere who want freedom, human rights, and democracy. And although some are counseling him that this mission is quixotic, he shows no intention of giving up,” former communications director for the Republican National Committee, Clifford May, said in an interview yesterday.


Mr. May said that he believes the White House is likely to view much of the national security bureaucracy with skepticism as it puts together a cabinet for the second administration.


“I think the White House will look at the CIA and the State Department in particular and recognize that there are many employed in those agencies that have not been supportive of the president,” he said. “I would expect the president would not want that situation to continue into a second term. I hope he wouldn’t.”


A CIA assessment of Iraq leaked to the New York Times in September was particularly damaging to the president’s re-election campaign. The conclusions that the current level of unrest in Iraq would be the most likely forecast for events in that country nearly became a talking point for the Kerry campaign.


But the senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, Danielle Pletka, said she was not so sure the president would refrain from relying on the agency many of his lower level political appointees have come to regard as a fifth column inside the administration.


“While there are certainly individuals inside the administration that are skeptical of the CIA, I don’t think we’ve seen any indication their views are shared by the president. If they were, I would like to know why George Tenet only left his job this year,” she said.


If the president decides to use his term to make his policy match his rhetoric of advancing freedom in the Middle East, he will be more likely inclined to promote those advisers most closely linked to the Iraq war and recently pilloried by Congressional Democrats for failing to plan for its aftermath.


While no decisions have been made, the latest speculation has the White House tapping former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson to take the job of Mr. Ashcroft. If Mr. Thompson becomes attorney general, he will be the first African American to hold the position. Governor Pataki has been mentioned to take over the Department of Homeland Security, filling the shoes of another moderate northeastern governor, Mr. Ridge. But this job also has its risks to ambitious politicians. If there is another terrorist attack on American soil, the man in charge of homeland security will likely be blamed.


Administration officials also say there is a strong possibility that the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will become secretary of state once Mr. Powell leaves. Mr. Powell ruffled many feathers this summer when Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward published a book that had Mr. Powell complaining about how he was often shut out of major policy deliberations in the Bush administration.


Should Ms. Rice move to Foggy Bottom, the fiercest internal competition opens up for her old job. Among those names in circulation are the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the man largely credited as the intellectual architect of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the undersecretary of state, John Bolton, an early candidate in 2001 for the slot of deputy secretary of state and a skeptic of international agreements with rogue states. Also in the running in this scenario is senior National Security Council director, Robert Blackwill, a former ambassador to India who is credited with drafting the strategy to marginalize Ahmad Chalabi from the interim government in Baghdad.


The advantage of the national security adviser post is that it does not require congressional confirmation. In this respect, it is ideal for controversial figures such as Mr. Bolton and Mr. Wolfowitz, who have come under heavy fire from democrats on Capitol Hill for their alleged manipulation of pre-war Iraq intelligence.


The president, however, has also been counseled by allies to embrace the international community in his second term. Yesterday, Prime Minister Blair of Britain urged the president to make the quest for Middle East peace a higher priority. The president reluctantly went along with Mr. Blair’s recommendation to have European countries negotiate with Iran on their nuclear program, instead of referring their violations of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty to the United Nations. If Mr. Bush is to heed the advice of the foreign leader most supportive of the Iraq war, Mr. Blackwill, or the deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, would likely emerge as frontrunners to run the National Security Council.


Ms. Pletka cautioned the administration’s critics though from assuming that a second Bush administration would reverse those policies the president has championed in the campaign.


“There are a lot of people who have suggested the second Bush administration foreign policy would be a departure from the first,” she said. “One thing we learned in this campaign is that President Bush ran on his foreign policy record, he did not run away from Iraq, his war on terror or his approach to Iran and North Korea. So I think you should expect continuity because that is where his mandate is.”


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