The moderate who wasn't there

Christine Todd Whitman can cry all she wants, but today's GOP is not her party. And she has no one but herself to blame for that.

By Steven Hart

Jan 27, 2005 | You wouldn't know it from the rather whiny title of her new book -- "It's My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America" -- but there was a time not so long ago when Christine Todd Whitman was being called the future of the Republican Party.

The GOP, groggy from the loss of the presidency after 12 years of dominance, certainly needed a face-lift. The ravening beast that had always coiled within the dapper bosom of the Reagan presidency had burst forth during the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. The Reagan-era slogan "It's Morning in America" had given way to "It's Payback Time, Liberal Scum." When she became New Jersey's first woman governor in 1993, Whitman looked like a bellwether back to the sensible middle way -- a moderate Republican who was pro-choice, talked a good game about fiscal discipline, and seemed accepting of gays. Her direct, plain-spoken manner was immensely appealing in person. Pundits talked of "Whitman Republicans" rescuing the GOP from its extreme right contingent; Whitman herself seemed destined for bigger things than the governor's mansion.

That was then, this is now. Bush's narrow victory in November completed the Republican Party's transformation from a vehicle for principled conservatives into a debt-fueled pimpmobile for crony capitalists and religious hucksters. Rockefeller Republicans -- a tag Whitman has proudly embraced -- are second only to the Clintons in the party demonology. The tax code is about to be revamped to allow further looting of the public coffers, and culture-war commandos are drawing a bead on everything from Social Security to SpongeBob Squarepants. And even as Bush and his backers are doing doughnuts on the National Mall, Whitman steps up to ask, with a cluelessness that borders on the sublime: "Will the GOP interpret the president's reelection victory as a mandate, even a requirement, to continue to cater to the demands of the far right on a series of key wedge issues?"

If Whitman really thinks this was ever an open question, voters are entitled to wonder why she should ever be taken seriously again as a political candidate. For that matter, we should all ask if Whitman even believes her own words. She was, after all, co-chair of Bush's reelection campaign in New Jersey, so none of what's happened in the past two months could have been much of a surprise. Nor could she have feigned shock when "It's My Party, Too" drew advance ridicule from right-wingers on the Internet. "Earth to Christie: We won," was all one New Jersey Republican had to say to the Star-Ledger, the state's largest newspaper, when asked about the book. The GOP has become comfortable with its inner troglodyte -- in fact, it embraces the lil' fanged bugger. This rather thuggish organization that loves to rule but refuses to govern is not Whitman's party anymore. To the extent that she helped make this transformation possible by putting a pleasant face on the party's ugly excesses in the 1990s, Whitman has earned her irrelevance.

Christie Whitman has long been a puzzle to New Jersey residents, and "It's My Party, Too" will give them plenty of company. Whether as a rallying cry for moderates of both parties, or as an argument for Whitman's continuing value to Republicans (or Democrats), the book is almost comically unconvincing. The hard-liners who now control the GOP are laughing off Whitman's warning that they are alienating the majority of voters. Campaign 2004 showed their mastery of the undemocratic art of fracturing the opposition, pumping up the base and confusing the issues with a blizzard of lies -- see the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The fact that "moderate" Republicans like Whitman were willing to play loyal soldiers in this fight leaves us with the question of what good they are to anyone.

Middle-of-the-road Democrats (and anyone with a memory of recent history) will be offended by the gross distortions and errors of omission swaddled within the book's somnolent Chamber of Commerce banalities about compromise and negotiation. "I joined the administration cautiously optimistic that the extreme bitterness of the Florida recount -- in which actual fights had broken out at one polling place -- and the Supreme Court decision on the election could be put behind us," Whitman writes in her opening chapter. But, alas, "the Democrats showed only a limited interest in working cooperatively." How much dissembling can be packed into one sentence? I don't recall anything about fistfights, but I do know the Republicans sent a handpicked mob of party operatives to shut down a legal recount. Whitman's schoolmarm tone tries to turn the theft of the presidency, aided and abetted by the Supreme Court, into a playground shoving match, with Democrats painted as the sulking losers. And by no stretch of the imagination can the shellshocked lassitude of the Democrats following that debacle be considered resistance.

Every page of "It's My Party, Too" is drenched in speechwriter chloroform -- many readers will feel their eyelids fluttering from the very first sentence: "We stand at a historic juncture in American politics . . ." But it's when her writing is at its dullest that Whitman is prone to try to slip a whopper past the reader. She endorses the idea of reducing greenhouse gases, then calls it "a goal President Bush also supports." She talks of making government accountable to the citizenry, yet as governor she eliminated the Office of the Public Advocate, a highly effective tool for keeping politicians honest. Looking back on the infamous 1996 photo of her patting down a randomly chosen man during a police-led tour of Camden, Whitman writes: "As soon as I touched the young man, who was African American, I realized I'd made a mistake. I had no business 'fake frisking' him." After looking at that photo and Whitman's gee-this-is-such-fun grin as she humiliates the man, I find it hard to believe Whitman regretted anything except the fact that the photo came to light.

Next Page: Whitman is hardly a standard-bearer for any kind of moderation

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