Bush team is adept only at bungling

ANDREW GREELEY

_The Bush administration re-
minds me of Jimmy Breslin's
comic novel, The Gang That
Couldn't Shoot Straight. The
premise of the novel was what
if you had a Mafia gang whose mem-
bers were incompetent at the things
that mafiosi are supposed to do. Sim-
ilarly, the Bush administration has
often shot itself in the foot because
its key players are not qualified for
their jobs. They make a mess of the
job and are protected by secrecy; or
if that isn't possible, by spin.
The current example is the selec-
tive firing of U.S. attorneys for rea-
sons that are not yet clear. The
gnomes who created the mess are
two of President Bush's old cronies
from Texas: Alberto Gonzales and
Harriet Miers. Neither, as is now
patent, is a heavy hitter. Gonzales
has been involved in controversies
over the Geneva Convention (which
he called "quaint") and legal memos
that appear to involve approval of
secrecy, torture, imprisonment with-
out trial and spying on Americans
without legal warrants. Small won-
der the president does not want him
to testify under oath.
Another example of not being able
to do the job were the men who were supposed to deal with Hurricane Ka-
trina: Michael Chertoff and Michael
Brown (of Homeland Security and
FEMA, respectively), neither of
whom had the intelligence to deal
with a catastrophe or the experience
of responding to major disasters (un-
like Brown's predecessor Edward
Witt). However, they were loyal Re-
publicans, so no other competence
was required. New Orleans contin-
ues to be a mess; FEMA continues to
be unable to spend the money. No
heavy hitters in this mess.
Then there is the Coalition Provi-
sional Authority, which was sup-
posed to govern Iraq in the years af-
ter the war. L. Paul Bremer, the head
of CPA, did not speak Arabic and had
never served in the Middle East. He
had been a staff aide to Henry
Kissinger and ambassador to Nor-
way. The members of his staff,
mostly younger Republicans, seem
to have been even less qualified, and
according to journalists covering
Iraq, did not speak Arabic and rarely
left the fortified Green Zone. What-
ever Bremer's intentions, he and his
staff must share the blame for what
came after the new government was
installed. None of them seems to
have been a heavy hitter.
The worst example by far of the
gang that could only shoot itself in
the foot is the president's foreign pol-
icy team. Condoleezza Rice had been
provost at Stanford University,
which might have qualified her to be-
come president of a state college in
the California system, but scarcely
the president's top foreign policy ad-
viser or now secretary of state. Don-
ald Rumsfeld was a hard-driving and arrogant corporate executive skilled
at bureaucratic infighting who ig-
nored the advice of the experienced
military officers and ran the Defense
Department as his own fiefdom. He
used the war to prove his hypothesis
that a small American military force
would easily triumph, and he made
no preparations for reconstruction
after the war -- two tragic mistakes,
the results of which are still with us.
Vice President Dick Cheney, on the
basis of the ''Scooter'' Libby trial,
seems an angry man with paranoid
tendencies who may even now sus-
pect an Iraq link with al-Qaida and
weapons of mass destruction hidden
away somewhere. Mixed in were a
clique of neocons: Paul Wolfowitz,
Douglas Feith and Libby, who could
write strong memos. The only heavy
hitter, who might have been able to
prevent the mistake of the war, was
Colin Powell, whom Rumsfeld and Ch-
eney marginalized. No wonder the
war went terribly wrong and tens of
thousands have died.
Gonzales, Miers, Chertoff, Bremer,
Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz:
Could any of the members of this
gang have been expected to shoot
straight? Besides Powell, where were
the wise men (and women) who could
have protected the country from a
string of disasters?
Bush is a victim of his bad taste in
advisers and staff, his propensity to
Texas cronyism and his inclination to
cover up and spin the truth. There is
no reason to believe that he is better
advised about the ''new'' strategy in
Iraq, or that the mistakes will not
continue till Jan. 20, 2009. No heavy
hitters need apply.