Politicizing the census

Last week, the Obama administration announced that senior White House aides would supervise the Census Bureau’s conduct of the 2010 survey. Republicans quickly charged that the White House was politicizing a potentially explosive issue that has traditionally been dealt with in a non-partisan manner. The White House responded that it’s only doing what its predecessors did.

Ed O’Keefe of the WaPo decided to talk to previous Census directors to see what the record really shows about White House involvement with the decennial survey. The director for the 2000 census engaged in some coordination with the White House on what sound like pretty mundane issues, never above the deputy chief of staff level. The 1990 director said she had no contact with the White House, except via her superiors at the Department of Commerce. If Rahm Emanuel is going to call the shots this time around, that would be a real change (not of the kind we’re supposed to believe in).