Bush's Bioethicists Under Fire Again for Political Role

This time it isn't Leon Kass stumping for President Bush's stem cell policies in the final months of the election cycle. This time it is President's Council on Bioethics member and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, for two things. First, heaping praise on President Bush's inauguration speech in his editorial writing - when he himself advised the president on the content of that speech. Second, and more important, he is accused of playing a somewhat inappropriate role for a journalist in that he was advising a president on a speech - particularly of this magnitude. It is actually a sort of strange charge, I think, but the Post is hammering away at it.

Krauthammer was invited to the 90-minute session by Peter Wehner, director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson was also there, along with counselor Dan Bartlett, senior adviser Karl Rove and more than a half-dozen other administration officials.

Wehner's invitation said: "What should this administration do/say more of -- and what should it do/say less of? What are the key, achievable goals we should aim for during the next four years?" In a follow-up note, Wehner asked Krauthammer to lead off the discussion on "spreading liberty to the Middle East."

Now seriously, what possible purpose other than providing political advice can there be for a meeting with Rove and company? I'll wager that no member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission ever met with James Carville, even just to tell jokes. But, then again, Harold Shapiro, its chair, didn't campaign for the connection between Clinton and NBAC recommendations during an election year either.

But I'm having trouble with the claim that Krauthammer is behaving any differently in terms of advising President Bush than are dozens of other journalists on the right who have well known positions. But then I am not a journalist. To wit: Fred Hiatt, while speaking in defense of Krauthammer's integrity, concedes that "Post editorial board members are not permitted to offer politicians private advice, but 'obviously I have less ability to set rules for people who don't work for me.'"

I guess I think it is much more problematic that the members of the President's Council are selling the product of their deliberations for profit through a commercial press. But that's just me.