WASHINGTON (AP) -- Politics and re-election concerns rule the White House at the expense of good public policy, says a former aide to President Bush.
Not so, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday, dismissing comments from John J. DiIulio as "baseless and groundless."
DiIulio issued two statements, the first generally standing by his criticism, the second -- similar to Fleischer's comment -- calling his own allegations "groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples."
DiIulio, a Democrat who led the White House office of faith-based initiatives until August 2001, said in an interview with Esquire magazine: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: complete lack of a policy apparatus."
"What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis," he was quoted as saying in the January issue. Karl Rove, DiIulio said, is "enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political-adviser post near the Oval Office."
Fleischer said of the Esquire article, "Any suggestion that the White House makes decisions that are not based on sound policy reasons is baseless and groundless."
DiIulio did not back down in the first statement he released Monday through the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches.
He did dispute two quotes, neither of which involved his assertion that re-election interests are paramount in the Bush White House. DiIulio is quoted extensively in the article, many of his comments culled from a seven-page "manifesto" the magazine says he prepared on politics inside the White House.
In one passage he was quoted as saying that what White House domestic policy adviser Margaret LaMontagne "knows about domestic policy could fit in a thimble." DiIulio said Monday he had no recollection of making that statement but "I humbly and sincerely apologize to her just the same."
He also said one unspecified exchange with Rove depicted in the article "did not occur as such." He was apparently referring to a passage in which he complained to Rove about the heavy presence of Christian evangelical leaders in the White House. DiIulio tells Rove in the article: "I'm not taking any (expletive) off of Jerry Falwell."
DiIulio's first statement Monday said the article "is unjustly hard on Mr. Rove and over-the-top complimentary to me, thereby creating a too-pat contrast that is, I feel, MOST UNFAIR TO MR. ROVE." DiIulio did not say how the article was unfair. But, he said, "I regret any and all misimpressions."
After DiIulio's first statement, Fleischer said DiIulio had "issued an apology."
Shortly after the press secretary's criticism, DiIulio issued a second statement that was strikingly similar to Fleischer's comments. "John DiIulio agrees that his criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. He sincerely apologizes and is deeply remorseful," a university spokeswoman said.
DiIulio declined to elaborate.
He had led a White House office promoting Bush's "faith-based initiative," which stalled in Congress amid fierce debate over how religious programs can get government money without running afoul of the constitutional separation of church and state. He is a professor of politics, religion, and civil society at the University of Pennsylvania.
Democrats leveled similar charges against the Bush White House in the Democratic Leadership Council's magazine, "Blueprint." The magazine says, "The hyperpolitical nature of the Bush White House, which will leave no wire unpulled in its efforts to get the president re-elected in 2004, indicates that Republicans acknowledge their political vulnerability even in the wake of the successful midterm elections."
