Game Theory

Some people go into politics because they care about policy. Others view politics as another species of sport: who wins? how? what tactical maneuvers are effective? What’s the score?  For those of us who have been unable to understand how or why a man with no obvious engagement with any policy issue, domestic or foreign, became President, game theory may supply the answer.

The November election showcased once again the stark differences between George Herbert Walker Bush and his son. The elder Bush was a policy wonk who clearly enjoyed the art of governing, and just as clearly found the politics of getting there distasteful. His son is sort of a mirror image—bored with the nuances of policy, but an enthusiastic and ruthless participant in the game of political combat. Suddenly, the Bush Administration’s preference for “team players” (a preference said to have doomed the aspirations of former Mayor Goldsmith, to whom the notion of a team was foreign), its tendency to cast all issues as contests between “them and us,” its announcement to our allies that they must either be with us or against us, all become understandable. Being President is just like owning that baseball team—all about winning and losing. Their guys against our guys. Score or no score.

 And let me give credit where credit is due: this President plays to win.

The challenge for Republicans has been to keep both business and the Christian Right—uneasy teammates at best—in the ranks. It took a President who didn’t care about anything but winning to figure that one out. Big businesses (not the small businesses that are the engines of job creation and economic growth, but the big guys—the Enrons and Halliburtons) were bought off with tax breaks and special rules insulating them from the forces of the marketplace to which they pay lip service. The fidelity of the Christian Right was bought with our federal courts.

Of the two Faustian bargains, it is the first that gets most of the media attention, but the second that should make our blood run cold. Sure, this Administration can drill for oil in Alaska, buy votes with steel tariffs and farm subsidies, even take us into an ill-conceived war that makes us more, rather than less, vulnerable to terrorism. It can pursue policies that harm the economy at home and isolate us from our allies abroad. And, indeed, it is doing all of those things. But the minute Bush is voted out, those policies can be changed. The harm is real, but not necessarily permanent. The federal courts are another matter entirely, because once appointed, federal judges serve for life.

The existence of an independent judiciary is our guarantor of fair treatment by the government. And that judiciary has been the target of the Christian Right ever since the Supreme Court ruled that government—in the guise of public school officials—cannot constitutionally make children pray. Not that the school prayer decisions are the only ones the radical right dislikes—the constitutional principle of equality for women and blacks, Roe v. Wade, the refusal to allow censorship of television and movies that offend their sensibilities—all of these are on the Christian Right’s list of grievances. Bush won their allegiance during the Presidential campaign by clearly signaling his intent to reverse federal law by appointing a different breed of judge. His first appointments to the bench were blocked, but they were favorites of the Right. The message was clear: give me control of the Senate, and I’ll give you courts run by Ashcroft clones. 

The Christian Right repaid him last month with an enormous get-out-the-vote effort that made the difference in a number of close races.

Until last month’s election, Democratic control of the Senate was all that kept Bush from packing the courts with rightwing ideologues. Now there is nothing to stop him.  He won the game.