When George W. Bush was applying to college, and later to graduate school, he could rely on something far more powerful than affirmative action: He could count on affirmative influence.
After a less-than-stellar academic record at prestigious Phillips Academy, he was accepted at Yale, from which his father graduated and where his grandfather sat on the board of trustees. After an undistinguished academic career at New Haven, he was accepted at Harvard Business School.
With the Bush administration filing a pair of briefs late Thursday opposing the University of Michigan’s use of what Bush calls quotas, Democrats contended that the president, who benefited from a legacy of preference, is a flawed messenger to inveigh against affirmative action.
“It’s the inherited advantage,” said Democratic consultant Frank Greer. “There is a degree of hypocrisy with his grandstanding against Trent Lott before an African-American audience and taking a position on an issue which he could have stayed out of.”
Republicans said Bush was standing up for a core belief.
“I think he took a very principled position that many of us, particularly Republicans, hold,” said Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The Democratic Party “is hard-pressed not to define affirmative action as you did at the University of Michigan. But it’s very hard to ignore the woman [in the case] who applied for admission but was denied because she was white.”
By weighing in on one of the third-rail issues of American politics, Bush ensured that there will be a battle over civil rights between now and the 2004 election, especially from those Democrats who would like to succeed Bush as president and thus need to win over a Democratic Party base that strongly favors affirmative action.
At the same time, Bush no doubt solidified his support among his conservative base, which long has opposed affirmative action, with his decision to side with the white applicants suing the University of Michigan. The White House apparently hopes the president, in his Wednesday talk, cloaked his words about the Michigan case with enough calls for diversity and tolerance that the negative impact from the brief will be limited.
Indeed, administration officials emphasized that Bush was addressing only the Michigan case and not making a sweeping statement about whether other affirmative-action programs are constitutional.
Affirmative action has had an uneasy place in American politics since President Richard Nixon implemented the “Philadelphia Order” in 1969 that included goals and timetables for including minorities in federal contract awards.
Ever since, Republicans have been quick to find unfair “quotas” embedded in many of the programs, while Democrats have argued that the programs merely level the playing field of opportunity. President Ronald Reagan opposed affirmative action, and so did the first President George Bush. President Bill Clinton embraced it–but not quite wholeheartedly, with his slogan “Mend it, don’t end it.”
Now President Bush has staked out his clearest position on the issue to date by labeling affirmative-action programs at Michigan unconstitutional because they include race-based quotas. At the same time, the president hailed diversity and acknowledged that “racial prejudice is a reality in America.”
Timing concerns some in GOP
Even some Republicans conceded that the timing was less than ideal, coming only weeks after the resignation as Senate majority leader of Lott (R-Miss.), whose seeming embrace of segregation drew a strong, public and personal denunciation from Bush and left many Republicans feeling that the party had suffered another setback on race.
“Sometimes you get to pick your fights and sometimes your fights get picked for you,” said one Republican strategist with close ties to the White House. “The fact is that affirmative action as administered by the University of Michigan is not a fair practice and does have a perverse impact. But if you were putting together the agenda for January, would you put affirmative action on it proactively? No. But you also have to have some principles that you have to stand for.”
Affirmative action is a nuanced issue, and the level of support for it often depends on how it is defined. If an affirmative-action program is seen as imposing numerical quotas, an overwhelmingly majority of Americans opposes it. If it is seen as merely creating a level playing field, the public is more likely to favor it.
“The Trent Lott thing hurt the Republicans because it bothered sensible people in the suburbs who don’t like racism,” said Democratic pollster Fred Yang. “I think affirmative action is a more complicated issue.”
That said, Yang noted that among likely Democratic primary voters, who tend to be relatively liberal, affirmative action “will be a big issue.”
Resigned to criticism
Republicans are resigned to the fact that Democrats will hammer away at Bush on the issue.
“They are going to beat on him regardless,” the GOP strategist said. “It is clear what mode they are in. They are going to attack from sunup to sundown. So he may as well stand up on principle and not try to figure out how you can ameliorate the Dems, or you are not going to get anything done.”
Every Democrat who has announced plans to run for president in 2004 denounced Bush’s decision to enter the case on the side of the white students. One of them, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, also has criticized the so-called legacy admissions programs in which applicants are favored because their relatives are alumni.
In a speech in November at the University of Maryland, Edwards said: “Many schools reward applicants because their parents went to the same school. Instead of valuing parents who have worked for years so their child could be the first in the family to go to college, these schools actually put that child at a competitive disadvantage based on his parents’ education.”
Although he did not name Bush, Edwards sounded as though he could have been voicing the Democratic critique of the president and his position on affirmative action.
“Unlike affirmative action, which I support, the legacy preference does not reward overcoming barriers based on race or adding diversity to the classroom,” Edwards said. “It is a birthright out of 18th Century British aristocracy, not 21st Century democracy. It is wrong.”
