Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker is a longtime
contributor to TomPaine.com. He is also the founder of
the Real News Project, a new
not-for-profit investigative journalism outlet. He can be
reached at russ@russbaker.com.
Did you hear the one about the president’s
top domestic policy adviser? Tired of helping the president
pick the pockets of the poor and middle class on behalf of the
rich, he found a more profitable target. Or Target,
actually.
Last week, Claude Allen was arrested and charged with a
scheme to rip off Target and other stores by "returning" more
than $5,000 worth of merchandise he had allegedly never paid
for in the first place. According to police, Allen would buy
an item and put it in his car, then return and bring an
identical item from the store shelves for a refund based on
the original receipt.
Apparently, the White House had an inkling what was coming.
Back on Feb 9, it announced that Allen was resigning in order
to “spend more time with his family”—a bromide that any savvy
observer should know masks something more serious. In a
statement, Bush declared: "Claude Allen has been a
trusted advisor since 2001 ... Claude is a good and
compassionate man, and he has my deep respect and my
gratitude. "
Behind this sad incident lurk two interrelated calamities
of the Bush years: the continuing placement of the
dubiously-qualified in high positions, and the use of people
of color as window dressing for policies that harm communities
of color.
Before Allen’s unique shopping habits were revealed, it was
already becoming apparent that departments and agencies
throughout the administration were jammed with incompetents
and unfortunates who, based on relevant experience or
temperament or values, shouldn’t be there at all (see
“Appointees Guarding the Henhouse ").
One colleague previously hauled off to face justice is
David Safavian, the head of the White House Office of Federal
Procurement Policy—a former lobbyist and Hill staffer with
scant experience in issuing federal contracts prior to his
hiring by the Bush Administration, who was arrested in
connection with the sprawling lobbying corruption scandal.
Both Safavian and Allen will be on the docket in April.
In distancing the administration from Allen, unnamed White
House sources insisted to reporters that, notwithstanding his
title, it was never Allen who made domestic policy decisions;
he was a merely ceremonial nobody. No, they said, it was
former direct mail king Karl Rove—a man who believes that
‘policy’ and ‘politics’ are synonymous—who made all the policy
decisions, while the ceremonial black guy actually just pushed
paper. And that’s their spin, for goodness’ sake.
I’m apparently not alone in thinking that the brain center
itself is looking especially grim these days. Of late, leading
Republicans have begun advising Bush to get some "experienced"
people into the White House—raising doubts even about Chief of
Staff Andrew Card. And he’s probably the most qualified of the
lot. Of course, experience can go hand in hand with chicanery:
Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby,
qualified through long years of public—or at least
party—service, has been arrested and charged with a serious
crime: obstructing the investigation in the Valerie Plame leak
investigation.
The process of distancing Allen from the administration is
striking because, although nobody ever heard of him, he was
the top-ranking African-American on the White House staff, and
constantly at Bush's side both at White House events and on
trips around the country. Claude Allen was like that one
black in a suit stuck in every corporate group photo to
represent a non-existent diversity. Doubt that? Even after
Allen first told the White House about his little pick-up
problem, he still was Laura Bush’s guest in her box at the
State of the Union address. Why? Was he Laura’s good
friend?
Sometimes, as with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the
“nobody” routine means the exact opposite—that the miscreant
was actually a major player. But Claude Allen was just an
empty suit, a black pawn drafted to provide Bush with cover
for all manner of regressive acts—starting with cutbacks to
essential services, passing through tax cuts for the
wealthiest Americans and culminating in efforts to open
minority scholarship programs to whites.
The Claude Allen story also is important in giving the lie
once again to the GOP’s claim of moral superiority. In an
interview before he got in hot water, Allen explained why,
having been raised a Democrat, he had switched
parties. "I realized after the fact that I agree more
with the Republican Party platform, that it talked about
independence, that it talked about individual responsibility,
individual rights, it talked about the ability to guarantee
opportunities, not outcomes," he said.
That interview, fittingly, was conducted by Armstrong
Williams—another African American who was well-rewarded for
backing an administration that has done everything possible to
make life more difficult for others of their race. "It
is a small circle of conservatives, especially when you are
black," Williams would tell The New York Times. And
what a circle: Williams was widely shellacked after it was
disclosed that he’s been paid handsomely by the Bush
administration to swoon over it in his newspaper
columns.
And Allen presumed to speak of “individual responsibility.”
Perhaps the Target situation would make a convenient point to
bury that term forever, since it is hardly ever honestly
employed, anyway.
Routinely described as born-again and a “devoted father,”
Allen liked to talk about how his religious upbringing was a
key factor in his steady march from a poor home to the
pinnacle. Along the way, he befriended or worked for such
advocates of color-blindness as the former senator Jesse
Helms—one of the last of a generation recalling the days of
segregation with fondness—and Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas, known for biting the affirmative-action hand that gave
him a leg up. Allen lunched often with Thomas, who apparently
lectured him on propriety. "He would always say to make
sure I conducted myself appropriately," Allen told an
interviewer.
Now that Allen has failed the "appropriateness" test, the
administration has quickly washed its hands of him—with the
general acquiescence of the press and the punditocracy, a
woefully common scenario these past five years.
But, a few facts: Allen was on the highest White House pay
scale, earning $161,000 a year, and had bought a $958,300
house the same month he allegedly began stealing. According to
Newsweek, he was considered by fellow staffers to be
“a bit stuffy and holier-than-thou.” Allen, who had
clerked for a federal judge, went on to serve as the Health
and Human Services secretary for Virginia, where according to
the Los Angeles Times, he gained conservative
credentials by denying a low-income rape victim Medicaid funds
for an abortion.
Such a record apparently endeared him to the incoming Bush
team, and in 2001, he was appointed to the No. 2 post at the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. There he
promoted abstinence-only AIDS-prevention programs. By 2003,
despite slim legal credentials, Bush proposed Allen for a seat
on the federal appeals court, though Democrats blocked his
nomination. Apparently, Allen had once remarked that an
opponent of his boss, Jesse Helms, was connected to “queers.”
Explaining himself at his confirmation hearings, he told
senators that by “queers” he meant people who were "odd, out
of the ordinary." In 2005, he was brought to the White
House.
Claude Allen returned lots of items to Target because,
ostensibly, they weren’t up to snuff. He was actually
perfectly happy with the items he is said to have improperly
procured. The rest of us are left thinking about how to return
to sender something bigger, something many of us never ordered
in the first place, and which has turned into the worst kind
of damaged goods: an entire administration rotten to the
core.
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