We are having generational change on the court and will continue to have it over the next five to 10 years. |
We could do twice as good a job with half as many appointees. |
We're not in a 'what' crisis, we are in a 'how' crisis, |
What were they thinking? You know a hurricane's going to knock down cell phone towers, |
You can go through it and select the position and the title that you might like to have, like the associate deputy under secretary of interior. |
You end up with people like Mike Brown who have absolutely no qualification for office, but have plenty of loyalty and ideological zealousness. |
You go to the FBI where they investigate the answers to your forms, there are only so many FBI agents available to do that. Then you go to the office of government ethics, where they clear your financial disclosure and cure any conflicts of interest you might have, |
[The Office of Personnel Management's Plum Book, published at the start of each presidential Administration, shows that there are more than 3,000 positions a President can fill without consideration for civil service rules. And Bush has gone further than most Presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you've never heard of, and to give them genuine power over the bureaucracy.] These folks are really good at using the instruments of government to promote the President's political agenda, ... And I think that takes you well into the gray zone where few Presidents have dared to go in the past. It's the coordination and centralization that's important here. |