Christine Todd Whitman, who served as President Bush's administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency until she resigned under strained circumstances in June, 2003, has written a memoir that looks unkindly at the enormous influence of far-right advocates in the Administration.
To be published by Penguin Books at the end of this month, "It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America," asserts that in revving up his base for the November election, Mr. Bush "missed an opportunity to significantly broaden his support in the most populous areas of the country," i.e. the blue states. [1]
"The Karl Rove strategy to focus so rigorously on the narrow conservative base won the day," Whitman writes, "but we must ask at what price to governing and at what risk to the future of the party."
When president-elect Bush offered her the job as head of the EPA, says Whitman, she felt certain that he wanted her to build a strong environmental legacy. This was reinforced after a meeting with Karl Rove, Bush's master strategist. "I took Rove to mean that the work I would do in building a strong record on the environment would help the president to build on his base by attracting moderate swing voters." [2]
But "As it turned out," she continues, "I don't seem to have understood Karl correctly," as she goes on to describe the countless frustrations in dealing with what she calls the "anti-regulatory lobbyists and extreme anti-government ideologues" that she indicates hold too much influence in the party.
"A clear and present danger Republicans face today is that the party will now move so far to the right that it ends up alienating centrist voters and marginalizing itself," she writes. [3]
Ms. Whitman's book tour will take her to New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington, DC, and California. As the Washington Post noted last weekend: "Not a red state in the bunch."
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SOURCES:
[1] Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2005.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Associated Press, Dec. 19, 2004.
