By Ezra
Nobody's going to like me for saying this, but Michael Froomkin is 200% correct here:
The Bush administration has an admirable record of appointing African-Americans to top posts. And despite the occasional strange incident, I don't think it is a racist administration. Rather, it's thoroughly classist. Kleptocratic even.
For as far as I can tell, what George Bush -- and his team -- don't care about is poor people. All poor people. No sympathy (in the sense of a sympathetic or shared understanding) at all.
The one thing to remember, though, is that Bush is happy to exploit racism in favor of kleptocratic ends. He didn't, for instance, run for president to screw over black people, but he did win the South Carolina primary by embracing Bob Jones U., home of the nation's most racially regressive dating policies. Intentions-wise, it's not quite the same, but it ends up looking awfully similar.
Nevertheless, when you evaluate Bush, it's helpful not to mix up his opportunism with his aims. The religious fundamentalism, the social regressiveness, this is all subordinate to a pro-big business agenda. That's why we got Roberts rather than Luttig and Bankruptcy Reform rather than the FMA. The real charge against the modern Republican party isn't racism or theocratic dogmatism, it's a tendency towards kleptocratism that infects most every policy decision, foreign or domestic, that they make. And as I'm a big believer that Democrats need to pick a single line of attack and stick with it, I think that's the place to focus.
