When a company continues to fail miserably the answer is not to fire all the employees, but rather the CEO. If a team goes on a multi-season losing streak, the players aren’t all replaced, but rather the coach. So why doesn’t the same apply to the White House?
In the past we have seen great evidence of the failed cronyism that is the White House. Our first glimpse actually started during hurricane Katrina, when Mike Brown became a household name synonymous with failure. During that same time we had another name come to center stage, Harriet Miers, a name now resurfacing. Last year we saw the removal of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and some top brass changes in the military. Those can be attributed to the failed Iraq policy.
Now in the past month the failed state of cronyism is at an all time high. We have already seen three top military officials fired of the Walter Reed fiasco, something that top Republicans knew was going on since the early months of the war. Dick Cheney’s chief of staff has been convicted of numerous crimes, including the obstructing the investigation into the outing of a CIA agent. This week Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff resigns amid all the turmoil over the fired U.S.As.
For a person who ran a campaign on “accountability”, Bush sure has had none. Instead he constantly brushes off the problems and puts the blame onto cronies that have emerged. Take Harriet Miers. She is now becoming the fall person for the White House’s involvement in the U.S.A. purge:
With Mr. Bush traveling in Mexico, the White House insisted that the president’s role had been minimal and laid the blame primarily on Harriet E. Miers, who was White House counsel when the prosecutors lost their jobs and who stepped down in January.
Ahh very convenient. Blame the person who left the White House. But isn’t this the same person that Bush lauded before the American people as the best legal mind in the country to serve on the esteemed Supreme Court? If this is the caliper of Bush’s performance judgement then we really need to worry about Alito and Roberts.
Now to further separate themselves from the purge, the White House appears to be placing more blame on Gonzales:
With Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, insisting that Mr. Gonzales step down, his appearance underscored what two Republicans close to the Bush administration described as a growing rift between the White House and the attorney general. Mr. Gonzales has long been a confidant of the president but has aroused the ire of lawmakers of both parties on several issues, including the administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.
The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales’s credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on national security matters, including terrorism prosecutions.
Sure Gonzales has no credibility with the American people. Hell – he hasn’t had that in a long time. He was the one that sat before Senate and said that the Constitution does not give citizens the right to Habeas Corpus.
But all this does not remove the growing cloud over the Oval Office; instead it enlarges it. Are the American people expected to believe that Gonzales and Miers acted without any knowledge of Bush? We have one former Supreme Court nominee and both served as Bush’s former council. These people are well connected within the White House. With Gonzales Bush placed him on the pedestal as the best man to be our top law enforcement official in the nation. Now we are to believe that these long time friends of Bush are becoming some rogue officials? Absolutely not.
George Bush is in charge of the executive branch. The enormous number of failures within that branch are a direct result of his management. Not only should Gonzales be forced out, but also Bush. His failed management is what has lead to all the problems facing America today. His passing the buck mentality on blame is doing nothing to correct the situation either. The buck stops in the Oval Office and like the head coach of a losing team or the CEO of a failing corporation, Bush must face that accountability and be removed from office. Our nation can not allow these problems to continue to grow.
UPDATE:
I just noticed this little snip from the same article:
But inside the White House, aides to the president, including Mr. Rove and Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff, were said to be increasingly concerned that the controversy could damage Mr. Bush.
As I pointed out in this post, the damage is already done. Bush is the one who picked these people and let them keep performing. They need to fall from power but so does Bush.