From Katrina to Gonzales: Incompetence Reigns
WASHINGTON—Now that there will be no vote of “no confidence” in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, we must ask an impertinent question: What, exactly, are we supposed to have confidence in?
Certainly not the White House. Its response to congressional subpoenas issued on Wednesday to compel the testimony of White House officials who were involved in the firing of U.S. attorneys was that the chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary committees are “more interested in drama than facts.”
In fact, it is the White House that has drawn out the Kabuki dance by refusing to allow current and former staff members to come forward voluntarily—except under conditions that would involve what amounts to secret testimony without a transcript. The White House requirements resemble nothing so much as the so-called legal procedures in place for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their purpose is identical: To ensure that the public never knows what the evidence is and who is, or isn’t, culpable.
Intransigence is endemic to the Bush presidency and so we can predict with some certainty a legal wrangle over the subpoenas that is meant to do nothing more than stonewall the probes until the president repairs to his Texas ranch in 2009.
That is an awfully long time to leave the Justice Department reeling and rudderless. But we’ve long known that President Bush doesn’t care how or whether the federal government functions, so long as his functionaries are cared for and his partisan goals met.
The enduring mystery is why Republicans in Congress continue to play along.
In the argument over the failed Democratic procedural maneuver that attempted to set up the “no confidence” vote on the attorney general, Republican senators rose not to praise Gonzales but to bury discussion of his pathetic and increasingly bizarre performance beneath a diversionary blanket of rhetoric about the Democrats being partisan.
Well, of course they were. But that’s because the Justice Department on Gonzales’ watch has been turned into an arm of the White House and the Republican National Committee. This is the reason for the cover-up.
The firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons was merely the spark that illuminated deeper malfeasance and darker motives. The dismissals are to the Justice Department what Hurricane Katrina was to the Homeland Security Department: A catalyst that laid bare the culture of incompetence, cronyism and corruption that defines the Bush administration.
Just as the Senate was having its non-debate over the real issue—the degeneration of the Justice Department into a partisan tool—these developments were unfolding:
—The Washington Post reported that in selecting immigration judges—who are civil servants and not judicial appointees—the attorney general has favored those with Republican political ties above all else. This is itself a violation of civil service requirements. It was compounded by another breathtaking revelation: Half the appointees lacked any experience in immigration law.
—Bradley J. Schlozman, a former interim U.S. attorney in Missouri and former honcho in the department’s civil rights division, clarified (that is, changed) his testimony that he’d been “directed” by a career Justice Department official to bring politically charged indictments against former employees of a Democratic-leaning voter registration group on the eve of last year’s congressional elections. In essence, Schlozman admitted he testified falsely before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The timing of the indictments flew in the face of clear Justice Department guidelines against bringing charges that could affect an election so close to balloting.
—The White House pushed forward the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission despite his earlier Justice Department role in promoting voter-identification laws that have been shown in academic studies to disenfranchise minorities, the elderly and the disabled, who are less likely to have driver’s licenses—and more likely to vote Democratic.
No one expects Republican lawmakers to be terribly concerned about what is emerging as a clear motive of the Bush Justice Department: using both the criminal and civil rights divisions to tip elections toward Republicans. This is an admission of terribly low expectations.
But they should at least be alarmed that one of the most vital government agencies—one, it must be noted, that plays a pivotal role in the much-ballyhooed war on terror—has been irreparably compromised during Gonzales’ tenure. In the thicket of Watergate, it was Republicans who finally withdrew their support for Richard Nixon and put their duty to the country ahead of allegiance to their party. Why do they not do so now?
Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco(at symbol)washpost.com.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group
I recently encountered a wonderful word to describe this administration:
Kakistocracy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kakistocracy, rule by the least-able or least-principled of citizens, is a form of government in which the people least qualified to control the government are the people who control the government.
The origin of this word is Greek, derived from the superlative of the Greek kakos (bad), the superlative form being kakistos (worst).
A modern day example (although fictitious), could include the structure of an office from the comic strip Dilbert, where the least qualified employees within the office receive the bulk of the promotions and hold the highest and most powerful positions.
—————————-
Another example is Bush administration placing Mike Brown as FEMA director.
From the Peter Principle to those of Dick and Bush: the nadir of carelessness.
fizxxit, that’s great. The word your post brought to me was catastrophe.
Hopefully the voters will punish the Republicans for protecting Bush. But his project to disenfranchise Democratic voters benefits them, so maybe there’s some self-interest in their refusal to go after him. After all, back in Watergate days we had legislators with at least a modicum of
integrity. Now I doubt we have more than a few who can even spell the word.
And for those who admire the integrity of Chuck Hagel, go read how he won his first US Senate election and his connection with the DRE company which became ESS after he left it. I spotted him right away as a smart man who saw the advantage of early distancing himself from this administration and jumping early on the antiwar bandwagon. Did he not originally vote for the war and the Patriot Act? He’s also been busy looking moderate, but his history is anything but.
Ms. Cocco uses “incompetence” to describe things, but I’m afraid they have accomplished precisely what they wanted to — the complete subversion of the Constitution — exceedingly competently! W may look, sound, and act like a chimp (apologies to our chimp cousins) but the neocon agenda has been surgically implanted into the DOJ with incredible precision and it will take decades to undo the damage. And don’t underestimate Gonzo either; he’s a devoted tool, not an incompetent; he’s stearing the DOJ exactly the way these sociopaths want. And look at the smirk on his face. He knows nobody’s gonna stop them…not this class of Dems who keep playing with the OLD rule book, not the new neocon rule book.
Competence is not the major C word this admin brings to mind for me. The word is Contempt. They have nothing but contempt for me, you, the congress, the Law, the democratic process, the solders dying, the Truth, Treaties, negotiations, Honor, Duty, Scientific Realism, our spys, the environment, and all the other peoples of the world. For this reason, this is not the best of times for Americans traveling abroad. In the end, contempt does beget contempt. And all of this brought to us by a God and Jesus based administration.
jon
Connecting the dots: from human behaviors to ecosystem decline
http://StudentsForTheEarth.org
joneden, you said it well. contempt. zero regard for the consequences of their actions.
i go back and forth on this issue: do they have a strategy for the things they do (creative chaos or whatever you want to call it), or are they essentially bumbling, inept, and disastrously incompetent, and then they just react to things, usually, even then, making them worse w/their contemptuous arrogance?
in any case, it seems clear the wimpocrats will shoot themselves in the foot and neuter their own party rather than mounting a serious assault on the rethugs. why is that? b/c the wimps are there to maintain the essential structures of power. they could destroy the rethugs for forever if they wanted to, but then they’d have to do something fundamental about the shape of power in this country. that, they are not about to do.
It’s not even a question of being incompetent.
They just don’t give a shit.
Marie Coco (apparently a writer for the WaPo) writes, “The enduring mystery is why Republicans in Congress continue to play along…”
This is typical MSM baloney. It’s hardly any “mystery” — it’s simply because Republicans in Congress are vicious lying criminals, just like their accomplices in the MSM and Democratic Party. All of them are servants of the US ruling class, in its war against the rest of the world — including the bottom 96% of the US population. Republicans in Congress are doing precisely what the corrupt puppets of a corrupt ruling class are supposed to do, and they’re doing it brilliantly.
As exdem rightly notes above, the word “incompetence” is incredibly poorly chosen. These repulsive gangsters have skillfully taken over the entire machinery of the state — and face no serious opposition whatsoever. If the forces opposed to US corporatism, imperialism & militarism were one one-hundredth as “incompetent” as this, we’d be in much better shape.
They used Jesus to sway the good people who believed in Him. Then, they lied on every other aspect. What would we, in the West, say about a leader that uses religion and lies to fire the people up for war??
I wonder.
To all us secular citizens, is does not have to be their sin that condemns them, the breaking existing laws suffices, prosecuting them with those same laws will do.
rule of law not of men…
The Libby judge received death threats. Wonder how many others have gotten the Cheney call in the middle of the night…
Think back - how many so-called representatives changed their vote the morning of said vote for reasons unexplained?
“Good morning, Senator. It’s Dick… remember Wellstone.” Click.
Not that this administration would ever, you know, kill a million civilians without blinking, or out a CIA NOC agent, or lie about everything, or accuse anyone out of lockstep of being a gay stem cell terrorist lovin’ anti-American or anything…
How come the CIA’s so lapdog? They warned Bush/Cheney about al Qaeda, about curveball, about Chalabi. They told them aluminum tubes and Nigeran yellowcake were bogus. Then the administration blamed them for it all and had one of their covert agents outed to boot. Seems at least as bad as what Kennedy did to them. Where’s their Oswald for Bush and Cheney?
Frank1569: I would not put THAT past them.
FIXXIT: thanks for sharing that cool word/concept.
Joneden: Just because Bush co-opts the name of Jesus doesn’t mean it’s got ANYTHING to do with “God.” If you read any of my posts before I have explained at length the ‘god’ of this group is nothing short of Mars, the destroyer and patron of war and bloodshed.
Exdem: Good points. These are followers of Grover Norquist’s “make government small enough to drown in a bathrub” school of thought. He means government THAT cares for the people, but has no problem when it becomes the fascist extension of corporations that are so nakedly and deliberately, covertly and arrogantly MAKING war on FIXED cause for their god, mammon.
“and so we can predict with some certainty a legal wrangle over the subpoenas that is meant to do nothing more than stonewall the probes until the president repairs to his Texas ranch in 2009.”
He won’t reapir there! He wouldn’t last a week.
I think ‘exdem’ sums it up nicely. These are not incompetents running our government. They are a cunning group wedded to an ideology and what we view with alarm is exactly what they want to achieve. They want to so gut government competence and/or subvert it that the people themselves will want to destroy it which is, to them, the best way to do away with regulation. Whenever they hear people say, ‘the government no longer works’ its music to their ears because they hate government and want to do away with everything from government agencies, to legal restrictions, regulations, and benefits like social security and medicare. They believe that Government should only provide for the defense of the nation against foreign enemies or further the aims of empire and protect commerce. In doing so, the Government should be able to do whatever is necessary, including stripping citizens of their civil liberties, to further its aims. Other than that, if should do nothing. They are out to implement their agenda and are quite successful at it. These are not conservatives in power and they are not incompetent. These are radical ideologues and fanatics. They have come to destroy the foundations of our government and are very close to doing so.
Au contraire: Excellent points, and the back-up to them has been provided by John Dean in his timely analysis: “Conservatives without Conscience.” It’s the M.O and master play for these authoritarian neo con killers in chief.
Katyodat: Speaking of Chuck Hagel he has voted for Bushs policy more than any republcian 87% of the time.Hagel is just Bush in sheeps clothing
fixxit: re “Kakistocracy”
Like it. Brings to mind “Cackistocracy”.
Cack: To ease the body by stool; to go to stool.
Cack: UK Slang. Shit, poo, rubbish