Friday, April 07, 2006
Lessons of "The West Wing" for President Bush
This Sunday marks the conclusion of the seven-year run of "The West Wing." A television show about a Democratic White House is concluding just as a real life Republican White House seems to have hit rock bottom after one bad decision after another.
The last season of the West Wing offers an important lesson for President Bush.
Most of the loyalists who staffed the Bartlett White House have moved on to other things by now. Those who remain are few (Toby, C.J) and seen overwhelmed by the pressure of doing what was once divided among two or three other, super bright people like Sam, Donna and Josh.
The Bush White House, with its continued insistence upon demonstrated, super-long-term loyalty to George Bush as a condition of employment, is simply running out of able loyalists. The result is burnout of the competent as they compensate for vacancies and the elevation of the less competent to key posts.
Former Clinton official Bruce Reed mentioned another problem facing the Bush Administration in Slate recently:
[I]t isn't easy to breathe new life into a waning administration. Beyond Bush's diminished popularity, [new chief of staff Josh] Bolten must overcome the problem of supply and demand. When Clinton was elected in 1992, his administration received 50,000 résumés from around the country. When he was re-elected in 1996—by a much wider margin—only 5,000 résumés came in.
In the last years of a second term, people turn down jobs they would have killed to have a few years before. Senior Hill staffers don't want to give up secure positions of power to join an administration that will soon disband.
This is why the last two years of the Clinton Administration were dominated by ideologues, like Bill Lann Lee, who seized their opportunities to sneak around the rejection of their views by the body politic.
The Bush Administration has far fewer ideologues, because a commitment to any particular world view might hinder one's total support of President George W. Bush.
This means two things, for the final days of the Bush Administration, neither one of them good.
First, their commitment to President Bush will ensure that the White House staff will be even more indifferent to criticism and still more politically tone deaf ("Our base hates the amnesty bill." "Well only racists oppose amnesty.")
Second, the final years of the Bush presidency can more easily be dominated by Democrats who do have ideas, thank you very much, and are eager to implement them.
|posted by Jim on 3:48 PM|
Link
. . .
|
. . .
|
