Follow this cross-posted argument for a second…
First Julie Myers, a 36-year-old lawyer with no immigration, customs or law enforcement experience is appointed by Bush to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency with its $4 billion budget and 22,000 employees.
Why? Because she married Michael Cheroff’s Chief of Staff, and the son of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
Because she helped try and impeach Clinton?
And the Norris Alderson, not another another political operative, but not a women’s health expert either. He’s a veterinarian, and just friends of the Bush family. He is a big supporter and helped the local Bush Cheney team campaign.
Do I need to recap Mike Brown, former head of FEMA who was a horse “attorney” and got his law degree from an unaccredited university? No. I do need to point out that Mike Brwown helped with the Bush Cheney campaign.
Now we hear that David Safavian, was supposed to be the top expert in the whole country on budgets and federal procurement, was arrested on Monday, accused by the F.B.I. of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Jack Abramoff, the Republican operative. Mr. Safavian’s wife is a top lawyer for the Republican congressman who’s leading the “Investigation” of the White House Katrina response.
Now, let’s run the clock back about three years and go back to an investigation that quoted former White House staffer John DiIulio in Esquire in 2002.
“There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus,” John DiIulio tells Esquire. “What you’ve got is everything? and I mean everything?being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”
A current senior White House official: “Many of us feel it’s our duty?our obligation as Americans?to get the word out that, certainly in domestic policy, there has been almost no meaningful consideration of any real issues. It’s just kids on Big Wheels, who talk politics and know nothing. It’s depressing. DPC [Domestic Policy Council] meetings are a farce.”
OK, I got it.
They don’t know anyone else. They quite literally don’t know who to appoint to run the various departments of the government. If they did know, they would only hire the most loyal partisan operatives, not experts. The Bushies and the Bush staff know who to call for people who run focus groups, or film TV spots, or come up with campaign slogans. They don’t know anyone who can pump water out of a town. They don’t know anyone who can run a war.
The entire Bush team is just a big political operation. This country is largely being run by two kinds of people: industry plants who are there to break down the protections that hinder profits, and people who run campaigns.
That’s why there are always movie cameras and special signs and backdrops with focus grouped lines on them. That’s why the response to Katrina has been so shitty. Once the Bushies were in power, they hired thems that brung `em.
