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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Democrats want to make the homeland security czar talk to Congress. But after six months of losing turf wars to John Ashcroft, does the marginalized Ridge have anything to say?
Mar 26, 2002 | Congressional Democrats and homeland security director Tom Ridge are vying to see who can most exaggerate the importance of their spat over whether Ridge should have to testify on Capitol Hill. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., insists that the president's refusal to let Ridge testify is part of a plan to create a "shadow cabinet" operating beyond congressional oversight, while Ridge himself told ABC's "This Week" that his testifying before Congress would violate the constitutional separation of powers. Since almost every sort of executive official -- including one sitting president -- has testified before Congress at one time or another, Ridge's claim seems ridiculously self-important.
The White House, for its part, insists that Ridge is just a presidential advisor, with no department or budget, who should not be forced to testify before congressional committees. And this time, the White House is telling the truth: Ridge really is just an advisor with little say about budgetary matters or what goes on in the various homeland security-related departments. And that's the problem. He was supposed to be much more.
Ridge is so marginal, sources say, that he wasn't even consulted when the Pentagon decided this month to stop round-the-clock fighter-jet patrols over New York City, to the chagrin of New York's political leaders. He has clashed with Attorney General John Ashcroft, and lost, on several occasions. In fact, the White House hasn't seemed to miss an opportunity to remind Ridge how little control and influence he has, in the almost six months since President Bush appointed him homeland security czar.
"The department heads are trying to squish Ridge," says Ivo Daalder, a former Clinton NSC official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who's been closely following the government's post 9/11 homeland security efforts. And if Ridge and the president don't shift gears soon, Daalder believes they'll succeed. "He hasn't lost the fight yet. But somebody on the president's staff has to tell him that if he doesn't save Ridge, his ability to craft an overall strategy on homeland defense will be seriously undermined."
From the moment Bush created Ridge's office Oct. 8, critics have warned that this would happen. The Homeland Security Office was no doubt created with the best of intentions: to begin to coordinate the work of the multiple agencies with jurisdiction over domestic security issues, from the FBI, CIA and the Pentagon, to the INS, the Coast Guard, Customs Service, Border Patrol, FEMA and the nation's public health infrastructure. Ridge was supposed to make sure these agencies worked together with a minimum of infighting and overlap, and create a central authority capable of watching the big picture, which officials in the various agencies and departments might miss. But without budgetary authority or a statutory authorization for his impromptu "office," critics predicted, Ridge's every effort would be at the mercy of turf-conscious bureaucrats and recalcitrant Cabinet secretaries, no matter how close a relationship he might have with the president.
And that seems to be precisely what's happening. Even though he is supposed to have the president's ear, Ridge seems either unable or unwilling to use that clout. "Tom's power exists not in a formal organizational sense but because [people] believe that they need him, because [he can] get other departments to do their bidding," says Daalder. "If he can't deliver the president, he's gotta go back to Pennsylvania."
