Prince to Prince
Wisdom for the White House.

August 9, 2001 8:55 a.m.

From: Nick Machiavelli, Senior Partner, Machiavelli, O'Blarney, Iago, Alcibiades, and Morris, Political Consultants.
To: Karl Rove, White House Chief of Staff, Post Office Box 2004, Washington DC.

ear Karl,

Nice to hear from you — and so promptly. Usually they wait until their client's polling numbers are several miles below sea level before consulting Old Nick. I found your "Eyes Only" memo — Repositioning the President — very entertaining reading. So, of course, did the readers of the Sun-Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, etc., etc., etc., all the way down to the Oshkosh Bald Eagle.

Karl, a word in your ear: Never tell a girl how you are going to seduce her. Likewise never tell the voters exactly how you are going to fool them. The Catholic writer, G. K. Chesterton, said it best when he wrote "the man who preaches egoism is practicing altruism." Publicly announcing a strategy on reshaping a presidential image, even the right strategy, has two ill effects. It warns the punters to be on their guard against your advertised manipulation, and it suggests that the president may be a potted plant moved around the political spectrum at the whim of others. And as the English legal maxim has it: 'the greater the truth, the greater the libel.'

Now to the strategy itself. You propose returning to the "compassionate conservative" strategy that Junior ran in last year's election. There's a problem with that — namely, Junior lost the popular vote in 2000. Maybe the strategy had something to do with it.

Still, let's not quibble. Instead, examine what a compassionate conservatism strategy means in practice. The memo urges the prez to stress issues like education, "values," and immigration. Let's look at them individually.

A Bush education bill is today wending its way through Congress, shedding conservative reforms like vouchers and attracting high-spending liberal provisions as it goes. In a few months Junior will get to sign a popular bi-partisan education bill in the Rose Garden with Teddy Kennedy beaming paternally over his left shoulder. In three years time just before the 2004 election, when the only thing in education that has improved is teachers' salaries, what will Teddy be doing? Easy: He will be blaming the continued sorry state of education on Junior's failure to hike spending even more than he had done. And Junior will carry the can for another failed liberal program. It almost makes me feel compassionate.

"Values." Karl, this sounds nice, cuddly, wholesome — until you specify what values. For values are either platitudinous ("All you need is love") or divisive ("an eye for an eye") or both at once ("choose life.") Take the values topic in your memo-"the stem-cell debate." Expect no easy applause on that. Either the president prohibits experiments on stem cells taken from embryos — in which case he pits himself against people suffering from Parkinson's Disease; or he allows them — in which case he pits himself against the Pope at a time when he is seriously wooing the Catholic vote. And almost every "value" comes equipped with a similar clash.

Values divided America down the middle at the last election. If Junior proposes to woo moderates, Independents, and women as the Times wrote on Sunday, then he will put at risk his base among conservatives, women, and libertarians.

Which brings me to "immigration." If I read you right, Karl, you are pondering a Republican version of Clinton's "triangulation" strategy — i.e. Junior will position himself as the moderate between the left-wing Democrats and his own uncompassionate congressional GOP. There are innumerable problems with this idea — let me point out the most obvious one.

When Clinton looked for an issue on which to triangulate, he stole the popular issue of welfare reform from the GOP. Karl, you have apparently decided to steal the unpopular issue of an amnesty to legalize three million illegal Mexican immigrants from the Dems. Polls for the last 30 years have shown that most Americans think legal immigration is too high. Why would rewarding illegal immigration be a vote winner?

What you risk here is depressing your already low vote among both white and minority workers hit by immigrant competition while being outbid among Hispanic voters by Democrats who are already promising a more generous amnesty to more immigrants. That sounds a little too compassionate to play in Peoria.

But let's go back to Question One: Why are you repositioning the president anyway? The leaks say that you are worried that he is viewed as too conservative and fixated on such traditional Republican policies as cutting taxes and increasing energy production. But are women, moderates, and Independents really opposed to those things? Sure, I know the New York Times thinks so. But look around you. Junior is riding high in the polls and he has just won two victories in Congress that all the smart money said was impossible. Maybe Cheney has hit on a better political strategy than compassioneering? Maybe low taxes and low gas prices are popular. Hey, don't reject the idea out of hand.

My fee of $15,000 should be paid directly into my favorite faith-based charitable foundation — "Christians, Jews and Moslems for the Middle East Peace That Passeth Understanding." Make the payment either in cash or checks — no single check to be higher than $100 (for the purposes of IRS bookkeeping.) And please note that the foundation's account has moved from Switzerland to the Bank of International Settlements (Unincorporated), anchored just three and a half miles off the coast of Key West.

This originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.