Step One: The Name Game Use MTV-generation attention spans positively. Just give everything the right name: Clear Skies for reduced caps on industrial emissions, Healthy Forests for loggers felling healthy trees. Democratic response: "Yeah, but...." Bzzzzzzt! Sorry, time's up! Quick segue to Baghdad missile-cam footage. Holy shit, that's Tariq Aziz's house!
Step Two: Texas Two-Step
Implement sexy new programs in two stages: One, create them; two, pay for them, but then skip stage two. Drape yourself in photo ops with rescue workers and sponsor a $3.5 billion First Responders Act--then sit on your hands as the money for the act never gets approved. Or kiss a few million babies with the No Child Left Behind Act, then quietly make it the Most Children Left Behind Act by failing to approve $6 billion of the budget for it.
Step Three: Support Troops
Fly onto an aircraft carrier in full battle regalia, surrounded by troops. Then, in the middle of a war, cut benefits for veterans. And don't forget those troops at home: Quietly try to terminate overtime pay for emergency rescue workers. Overtime benefits can't wear a bomber jacket on the cover of Newsweek.
Step Four: Human Resourcs
Great appointments strategy: Let a facsimile of a human being sit at the top, then pack the lower ranks with eager monsters to handle the fine print, where the dirty work gets done. For example, let Christie Whitman take her lumps in public while deputy EPA administrator and former Monsanto lobbyist Linda Fisher holds the fort.
Step Five: Unfounded Mandates
Pass a big federal law and force states to comply with it, but make them pay their own way. Then laugh in all 50 of their faces while they bankrupt themselves. It's foolproof! Look tough announcing a Code Orange, but have the states pay $70 million a week for each alert. Meanwhile, slash state funding. And just as the school closings and layoffs begin, Joe Public gets his $19 federal income tax refund. Four more years, baby!
