The Stupid, It Burns!
It's always hard to tell just what this administration is thinking, or even if it is thinking, primarily because it is so secretive about everything. Case in point? The recent mass firing of eight US Attorneys. From today's NY Times:
The ouster of Mr. Bogden and seven other United States attorneys has set off a furor in Washington that took the Bush administration by surprise.
Summoning five of the dismissed prosecutors for hearings on Tuesday, the newly empowered Congressional Democrats have charged that the mass firing is a political purge, intended to squelch corruption investigations or install less independent-minded successors.
Interviews with several of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials, lawmakers and others provide new details and a fuller picture of the events behind the dismissals. Like Mr. Bogden, some prosecutors believe they were forced out for replacements who could gild résumés; several heard that favored candidates had been identified.
Other prosecutors may have been vulnerable because they had had run-ins with the Justice Department, not over corruption cases against Republicans, but on less visible issues. [Emphasis added]
Firing eight US Attorneys at one time was bound to make some news, so it boggles the mind that the White House was taken by surprise by the response, especially given the composition of the 110th Congress. I suppose an argument can be made that the Democrats in the 109th Congress had been so docile and so malleable that the White House figured they'd continue to go along with whatever the administration wanted, but that was back in the days when the Democrats were in the minority. Since November 6, however, the Dems, now in the majority, have been a little noisier.
But it gets better: apparently the administration was so surprised that it couldn't put together a coherent story to justify the mass firings:
Justice Department officials, who would speak about the department’s decision making only anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters publicly, now acknowledge that the dismissals were mishandled. They failed to anticipate how much attention the highly unusual group firing would draw, and the agency’s contradictory accounts about whether the dismissals were performance-related helped spur suspicions. [Emphasis added]
One thing I do know: the American public shouldn't be surprised. The same fumbling and bumbling has been in plain view in the morass of the Iraq War. The causus belli changed from month to month as no weapons of mass destruction were found and the fragrance of the alleged flowering of democracy turned into the stink of civil war. Generals were fired for having the audacity to suggest that many more troops than the Secretary of Defense believed were necessary would be required for keeping the peace or for suggesting that the true cost of the war would be in the trillions of dollars, not the paltry billions the White House claimed.
Either this White House is just stupid or it is malignantly arrogant for thinking it can do whatever it wants whenever it wants. Neither alternative is particularly reassuring. The question is now what is the Congress going to do about it?
The ouster of Mr. Bogden and seven other United States attorneys has set off a furor in Washington that took the Bush administration by surprise.
Summoning five of the dismissed prosecutors for hearings on Tuesday, the newly empowered Congressional Democrats have charged that the mass firing is a political purge, intended to squelch corruption investigations or install less independent-minded successors.
Interviews with several of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials, lawmakers and others provide new details and a fuller picture of the events behind the dismissals. Like Mr. Bogden, some prosecutors believe they were forced out for replacements who could gild résumés; several heard that favored candidates had been identified.
Other prosecutors may have been vulnerable because they had had run-ins with the Justice Department, not over corruption cases against Republicans, but on less visible issues. [Emphasis added]
Firing eight US Attorneys at one time was bound to make some news, so it boggles the mind that the White House was taken by surprise by the response, especially given the composition of the 110th Congress. I suppose an argument can be made that the Democrats in the 109th Congress had been so docile and so malleable that the White House figured they'd continue to go along with whatever the administration wanted, but that was back in the days when the Democrats were in the minority. Since November 6, however, the Dems, now in the majority, have been a little noisier.
But it gets better: apparently the administration was so surprised that it couldn't put together a coherent story to justify the mass firings:
Justice Department officials, who would speak about the department’s decision making only anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters publicly, now acknowledge that the dismissals were mishandled. They failed to anticipate how much attention the highly unusual group firing would draw, and the agency’s contradictory accounts about whether the dismissals were performance-related helped spur suspicions. [Emphasis added]
One thing I do know: the American public shouldn't be surprised. The same fumbling and bumbling has been in plain view in the morass of the Iraq War. The causus belli changed from month to month as no weapons of mass destruction were found and the fragrance of the alleged flowering of democracy turned into the stink of civil war. Generals were fired for having the audacity to suggest that many more troops than the Secretary of Defense believed were necessary would be required for keeping the peace or for suggesting that the true cost of the war would be in the trillions of dollars, not the paltry billions the White House claimed.
Either this White House is just stupid or it is malignantly arrogant for thinking it can do whatever it wants whenever it wants. Neither alternative is particularly reassuring. The question is now what is the Congress going to do about it?
Labels: Justice Department
posted by Diane at 4:28 AM
1 Comments:
Stupid OR malignantly arrogant? I'll go for both.
Notice, too, that it's all about appearance for these people. Their concern is that they failed to anticipate that there would be publicity -- it wasn't a mistake to have fired people who had good and excellent performance ratings in order to put hacks in their places, it was a mistake to fail to anticipate that people would be pissed off to discover this.
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