Better Late Than Never

These past few months have been uneasy times for the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy. In early February, Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said the office might be disbanded. The next day, the press secretary retracted Card’s statement and said the office would be retained. But as of March 31, the Office of National AIDS Policy still consisted only of a locked room with a phone that no one answered. That’s when the Washington Post picked up the story, which turned what had been a case of not-so-benign neglect into a public embarrassment for the Bush administration.

Within the week, the Bush administration changed its tune. It announced that it would appoint four individuals to the office, which would be led by Scott H. Evertz, the first Bush appointee who is openly gay. Evertz is president of the Wisconsin Log Cabin Republicans, a state branch of a national group which Bush at first repulsed and then met with during the campaign. The administration plans to broaden the office’s mission to include the international spread of the disease, adding a State Department official to its staff, and will also be creating a task force on the international AIDS crisis co-chaired by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson. We are glad that Bush has moved, however belatedly, to establish an office to guide national policy on a dangerous and expanding health threat. We also hope that the emphasis on the international aspects of the AIDS threat foreshadows a serious effort to combat the global spread of the disease, which represents a national security threat to the United States as well as a human tragedy of vast proportions.

However, Bush has by no means established his credibility on the issue. The Bush office will include fewer than half as many officials as it did under Clinton, and the administration has not yet made clear whether it will retain the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS— four letters from its members to administration officials have gone unanswered. Furthermore, we are concerned that by placing the AIDS office under the only openly gay member of the administration, Bush will be continuing the misperception that AIDS is a “gay disease.” Nothing could be further from the truth. If the Evertz appointment remains an isolated event, such a move will risk being interpreted as tokenism, both in terms of personnel and in terms of the office’s subject matter.

Finally, we must wonder why it took Bush so long. After all, the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, which has since been mired in controversy over questions of religious discrimination, was created from scratch in a matter of weeks. Bush may simply not have had time to establish his AIDS office earlier. But we cannot help feeling that his priorities are showing.