All Politics, All The Time
We don't need no steenkin' policy. LATimes (03.19.06):
"A growing Republican chorus is calling for a staff overhaul inside President Bush's beleaguered White House, but some conservatives say such a change would stop far short of fixing what they view as a serious flaw: an unfocused domestic agenda. The war in Iraq is dominating the attention of Bush and his top aides, these critics say, while the recent departure of the president's top domestic policy advisor after just one year has left the White House without an obvious conductor to direct the sometimes disparate policy-making machine.' Bush's Agenda Loses FocusThe President's top domestic policy advisor was Claude Allen. The "recent departure" business had to do with Claude being arrested on 25 counts of retail fraud for allegedly returning stuff he never purchased. Actually, he did buy stuff. He'd allegedly purchase an item, allegedly put it in his car, allegedly take the receipt back into the store, allegedly grab the same thing off the shelf, then allegedly try to return it. Or so they say. The "All Hat, No Cattle" approach has some folks wondering. "'You mean they have a domestic policy?' quipped Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the libertarian Cato Institute." John and Jane Q. Public are also catching on. "Bush is facing the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, in the low to mid-30s." "In one independent survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a plurality of respondents used the word 'incompetent' when asked to describe Bush. Folks also used the words "idiot" and "liar", though not as much as "incompetent". As an example of their apparent inability to formulate a focused agenda, the article discusses the Administration's policy, or lack thereof, with education. "'Somebody really needs to steer it if it's going to happen, but the sense at this moment is that nobody's really steering it,' said one GOP lobbyist who works closely with the administration on education issues but spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from the White House." And that tells us all we need to know about what's important to these guys.
Labels: politics over policy
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