The Democratic memos: Does anybody care?
November 26, 2003
by Byron YorkImagine this:
A liberal publication obtains copies of secret internal memos by members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force. The documents reveal that Cheney and his aides not only consulted big energy companies but actually took orders from those companies in crafting national policy.
If an oil company wanted the vice president to hold off on an initiative, then the vice president held off on the initiative.
If an electricity giant wanted the vice president to block the appointment of a regulatory official, then the vice president blocked the appointment.
The documents even suggest the administration knows it is doing wrong; on one occasion, two of the vice president’s aides say they are “a little concerned about the propriety” of doing the energy companies’ bidding. But they do it anyway.
When the memos are published, the administration doesn’t deny the facts but instead accuses Democrats of stealing the documents.
Now ask yourself: Were all that to happen, do you think the story would be ignored by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the news sections of The Wall Street Journal, and ABC, NBC and CBS?
And in the one big paper to mention the story, The Washington Post, do you think the only report devoted to the subject, a brief wire-service account on Page A-4, would be headlined, “Apparent Theft of Memos Probed”?
Not a chance. However the Cheney memos became known, the primary story would be their substance, and what they revealed about the internal workings of the energy task force.
Of course, none of that has happened. But something quite similar is going on right now, concerning not the president’s energy policies but his judicial nominations.
Recently, The Wall Street Journal editorial page published excerpts from a group of memos written by Democratic staffers to Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) about several Bush nominees.
The memos, dating from 2001 until April 2003, show Democrats working in close consultation with such groups as People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Actually, “close consultation” is too weak a phrase. The memos reveal the Democrats and the interest groups to be partners in the effort to defeat Bush nominees — with the Democrats serving as the junior partners.
For example, in one memo to Durbin, dated Nov. 7, 2001, a staffer described a meeting with the groups in which they “identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.” The staffer continued: “They [the groups] want to hold Estrada off as long as possible.”
And guess what: The Democrats held Estrada off as long as possible — not scheduling a vote for him when they controlled the Judiciary Committee, and filibustering him when they became the minority party.
Finally, Estrada gave up and asked that his name be withdrawn.
Another memo, to Kennedy, dated April 17, 2002, details how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund asked Democrats to delay the nomination of Julia Scott Gibbons to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Legal Defense Fund officials did not want her on the court when the University of Michigan affirmative action case was decided.
Members of Kennedy’s staff conceded they were “a little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on the resolution of a particular case.” But the Legal Defense Fund wanted action, and action it got. Gibbons was delayed.
Now that the memos have become public, have Democrats denied any of it?
Not at all. Rather, their defense has been to claim that Republicans stole the documents.
“It appears that the documents in question were taken without authorization and possibly illegally,” Durbin wrote in a letter to the Senate sergeant at arms. “This constitutes a serious breach of security.”
Maybe they're right. Late Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch
(R-Utah) announced that a Republican staffer had been placed on administrative leave after having "improperly accessed" some of the memos.It's not at all clear if that means the staffer, or any other staffer, in fact stole the documents. But if that did happen, then whoever is responsible should be fired.
But none of that changes the fact that it is the substance of the memos that is the greater issue here. The memos raise serious and troubling questions about the power which Senate Democrats granted to outside interest groups in the confirmation process.And that's a story, whether the press wants to report it or not.
Editor's note: This is a revised version of the original York column, which went to press before Sen. Hatch's news conference.
Byron York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each Wednesday. E-mail: byork@thehill.com
