David Ignatius blasts the bunglers inside the Bush Adminstration in his column in the St. Pete Times. Ignatius is upset with the lack of respect the political appointees treat the seasoned government workers.
The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against – a club of insiders who seem to think that they’re better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively.
This contempt has been evident in many of the administration’s failures. The disastrous incompetence of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 flowed from its status as a clubhouse for ambitious conservatives eager to punch a political ticket in a country they knew nothing about. The administration’s signature failure, in its bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was the work of a right-wing political appointee who scorned many of the bureaucrats who worked for him.
Ignatius ends with a challenge for the Democrats to “Become the party that fixes things, that solves problems, that respects expertise and professionalism. Let the GOP be the party of smart-alecks and know-it-alls and smirking e-mail writers. The Republicans have made a bed of political arrogance; let them sleep in it for a good long while.”
You’ve got to admire Ignaitus’s style. I haven’t seen so much politcal bungling since the Jimmy Carter years…another Governor who thought he knew better than everyone else.
The Bush adminstration has squandered the public’s support and confidence.
Read column: Bushies ridicule public servants
