It's a purge!
Or not really. Bush's cabinet has seen less turnover over his first term than any administration in recent memory. The only major shift was in Treasury a while back, when O'Neil was shown the door for not being on board with White House policy. So far, six cabinet secretaries have resigned, two more are expected, and two replacements have been named. Most notably, bete noire of the left John Ashcroft and darling of the left Colin Powell are leaving. In both cases, Bush has nominated White House insiders to fill those positions, and when Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge resigns, that will likely be the cases as well. Bush appears to be doing what anyone would have expected of him nominating people of proven loyalty to important positions.
A couple things have interested me about the nominations we know about so far. In both cases, Bush is nominating minorities to high government positions Gonzales for AG and Rice for state. Yet aside from scant reference to first Hispanic AG and First Black Woman Secretary of State I havent seen much cheering from the usual suspects about the significance of these appointments in regard to race/gender issues. Perhaps the fact that they are conservative Hispanics and Black Women negates the achievement.
Gonzales will face some flack for writing the memorandum defending the exclusion of detainees from the Geneva convention. While this position is legally defensible, I have in the past argued that it was a bad idea. Aside from that issue, I think that Gonzales should offer no more offense than any other Republican nominee. For one thing, he is not a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian, a belief that seems to make all liberals quake in fear. Why this should be so is beyond my powers to comprehend. The religious right certainly differs from the left in their conception of the good society. But they are not engaged in some desperate conspiracy to strip all the freedoms the left holds dear and put hippies in camps. Thats me, not them. But in any event, Gonzales isnt one, so that should make many people happy.
Condoleeza Rice will be officially nominated for Secretary of State early this afternoon. In many respects, she is an obvious choice for the President. She is loyal, agrees with him on foreign policy, and will likely act to reign in the careerist diplomats at State. She will be a competent representative of American interests rather than the representative of foreign interests to the administration. Appointing Rice to State signals that there will be no real change in the thrust of American policy not that anyone expected that there would be.
Some might argue that Rice is unsuitable because of the faulty intelligence that led Bush to move on Iraq. But I think that this really isnt a criticism of Rice, but rather of the intelligence services themselves, which brings us to the CIA. Jon Henke of [url= QandO]http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=429]QandO[/url][/url] gathered up some reactions on the left to the craziness at CIA. And gently pointed out to them that the same thing has happened before. Its been a long time since the CIA has been shaken up, and recent performance (for oh, say, the last four years) has been subpar at best. What was once admiringly called the Silent Service has since become a loudspeaker service, with every CIA agent with an ax to grind running to the Washington Post. Disagreeing with the president is one thing. Actively undermining a sitting president is unacceptable. Hopefully Porter Goss can begin the process of reforming the CIA, so that it can once more provide useful intelligence to the executive. (An important first step would be beefing up the operations side of the house human intelligence efforts have been haphazard and pathetic ever since the Church commission gutted the CIA back in the seventies. Indications are that this will be on Goss agenda.)
All in all, nothing about Bushs new nominees is earth-shattering, controversial or a sign of the apocalypse. I think Goss has the potential to be an outstanding DCI, and Rice may well be an excellent Secretary of State. Gonzales will do a decent job at Justice, but will not attract the hatred that Ashcroft did. Well have to see what other people are nominated, but I expect that there will be at least one democrat in the mix. So far, so good.
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B, Good thinking. My specific
B, Good thinking. My specific misgivings about Rice are five. 1) She's a Cold Warrior who, after all this time, shows few signs of having grasped the non-state, non-central nature of the new terror threat. That's not helpful. 2) Ditto, as a Soviet expert by training, she shows few signs of grokking the Middle East. 3) She's already well known for being one of Bush's closest advisors, indeed closest supporters. I fear that this will decrease the amount of independently critical thinking coming out of State. Powell seems to have done okayishly at this, when he wasn't getting rolled like a missionary in a biker bar. State exists to advise and abet, not be an enabler. 4) She loses battles to Cheney and Rumsfeld with breathtaking regularity. State should not be a rump of Defense. 5) Earlier this year, it was loudly announced that Iraq was now *her job*. That has not gone so well. To all evidence, she never even tried to take control of the various Iraq efforts.
In general, my opinion of Condi, which was originally rather high, is that she's a very loyal, very intelligent, total bust.
I agree with Bucket about
I agree with Bucket about bureaucrats. There are enormous and vicious turf battles going on constantly within agencies and departments, as well as between agencies and departments. You can't shake things up by going in and taking sides, you have to kick *everyone's* butt to get their attention. A lot of these resignations are internal bigshots pouting because they've been given notice that they aren't going to be treated like royalty anymore.
All that being said I'd be
All that being said I'd be happy to be proven wrong about this. That may seem like the critic's escape hatch, but I'm serious. I don't tend to react well to the Bush Administration's policies because I don't react well to the general line of reasoning. I would prefer things be done differently. But I'm not such a fah-laming liberal or naysayer that I can't hope for them to wildly exceed my expectations. For chrissakes, the future kind of rides on that! Good luck, Condi. As my old basketball coach used to say, "don't fuck up!"
ah... Porter Goss. I hear his
ah... Porter Goss. I hear his congressional aides are pissing people off left and right at the CIA. Hey, I realize that many of the old guard have to retire for cataclysmic change to occur in the US intellience community, however, making ALL of them leave at once could lead to a crisis in practical leadership that we probably can't afford. I realize this is a bit chicken little but snot nosed aides telling the clandestine operations chief how to do his job might go down better if the aides bothered to sugar coat things a little. Rumor is that they are downright rude and disdainful. That's not very nice, is it?
Condi, while proud of her as a feminist achievement, I do have reservations about what she's going to say and do. I wholeheartedly agree that she's a Cold Warrior and probably lacks the finesse to handle the Middle East very well. Madeline Albright didn't do so hot there, I doubt Condi will either.
As for Porter Goss'
As for Porter Goss' congressional aides - many of them were in the CIA with him, and left to join him when he got into congress. Also, as a member of the intelligence committee, the others would have had regular exposure to intelligence issues. In this case, the fact that they are congressional aides does not imply incompetance or lack of familiarity with the CIA.
Having had some experience with the ways of government bureaucrats, being nice and conciliatory to an entrenched civil servant does not typically yield results, especially if said servant feels his turf is threatened.