hilzoy

Presented Without Comment

by

by hilzoy LATimes, via firedoglake: “An intelligence analyst temporarily lost his top-secret security clearance because he faxed his resume using a commercial machine. An employee of the Defense Department had her clearance suspended for months because a jilted boyfriend called to say she might not be reliable. An Army officer who spoke publicly about intelligence … Read more

But Wait: There’s More! (Torture, That Is…)

by

by hilzoy Jane Mayer has a disturbing new piece in the New Yorker. It’s about the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, the dead prisoner whose corpse was photographed, packed in ice, at Abu Ghraib; and the difficulty of prosecuting anyone for his death. About how he died: the CIA apparently released several hundred pages about his … Read more

Someone Is Watching…

by

by hilzoy Yesterday’s WaPo had a truly frightening story about the FBI’s use of National Security letters: “”National security letters,” created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and … Read more

Aargh!

by

by hilzoy My first-ever double post. (Typepad assured me it had “encountered an error”, and five minutes after that the post had not appeared. Silly me for trusting them.) Since I can’t actually delete this, I’ll just note the following stories: Larry Wilkerson on Cheney’s role in Iraq policy (NPR interview), including this quote: “”There … Read more

Manipulating Intelligence

by

by hilzoy

A few days ago, David Brooks wrote what must be one of his most offensive columns ever. It’s about Harry Reid and his crazy paranoid fantasy that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to make people think that Saddam was an imminent threat who needed to be toppled by force. It begins:

“Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It’s been four weeks since he launched his personal investigation into the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence to trick the American people into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Reid had heard of the secret G.O.P. cabal bent on global empire, but he had no idea that he would find a conspiracy so immense.

Reid now knows that as far back as 1998, Karl Rove was beaming microwaves into Bill Clinton’s fillings to get him to exaggerate the intelligence on Iraq. In that year, Clinton argued, “Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions … and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.”

These comments were part of the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence on Iraq. (…)

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It has been four weeks since he began investigating this conspiracy and three weeks since he sealed his windows with aluminum foil to ward off the Illuminati. Odd patterns now leap into his brain. Scooter Libby was born near a book depository but was indicted while at a theater. Karl Rove reads books from book depositories but rarely has time for the theater. What is the ratio of Bush tax cuts to the number of squares on a frozen waffle? It is none other than the Divine Proportion. This proves that Leonardo da Vinci manipulated intelligence on Iraq and that the Holy Grail is a woman! (…)

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m. Odd thoughts rush through his brain. He cannot trust the letter “r,” so he must change his name to Hawwy Weed. Brian Lamb secretly rules the world by manipulating the serial numbers on milk cartons.

Reid realizes there is only one solution: “Must call a secret session of the Senate. Must expose global conspiracy to sap vital juices! Must expose Republican plot to manipulate intelligence!”

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m.”

Republicans have been quoting Clinton officials on the subject of Saddam’s WMD recently, even though, as Matt Yglesias points out, “”If a Clinton administration subcabinet official said it, it must be true” is not an epistemological principle one normally associates with conservatives.” What Clinton officials said is all beside the point, for several reasons which I’ll put below the fold:

Read more

Ethics R Us!

by

by hilzoy From the WaPo, news of an astonishing about-face: “President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings beginning next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe. According to a memo sent to aides … Read more

“Deficit Reduction”, Ha Ha Ha

by

by hilzoy From the WaPo: “The Senate approved sweeping deficit-reduction legislation last night that would save about $35 billion over the next five years by cutting federal spending on prescription drugs, agriculture supports and student loans, while clamping down on fraud in the Medicaid program. (…) The focus now shifts to the House, where the … Read more

Headlines From The Future…

by

by hilzoy (h/t Phil, in comments) First we started torturing people in Abu Ghraib. Now we are holding them in secret Soviet-era prisons in Eastern Europe. It got me thinking: what will the next fascinating revelation about our treatment of detainees be? Some possibilities: ‘Urbanized’ al Qaeda Prisoners Held In Cambodia Many analysts have noted … Read more

The Culture Of Life, Ha Ha Ha

by

by hilzoy From the WaPo: “A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teenagers could encourage sexual activity. Although the vaccine will not become available until next year at … Read more

Karl Told; Scooter Knew

by

by hilzoy Via Mark Kleiman, this ABC News story: “One of the reporters at the center of the investigation into the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, says he first learned the agent’s name from President Bush’s top political advisor, Karl Rove. Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper also said today in an … Read more

Health Savings Accounts

by

by hilzoy

Kevin Drum just wrote a post on the Bush administration’s idea for health care reform: Health Savings Accounts. I wanted to expand on what he said, since HSAs are a Very Bad Idea, and it’s worth knowing why.

The basic idea behind health savings accounts is simple. You get a health insurance policy that is, ideally, cheaper, but has a much higher deductible. In Kevin’s example, the deductible is $2,000; he suggests that such a policy would be $2,000 cheaper, but that’s wrong. CNN reports:

“According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for an employer-sponsored family plan averaged $9,068 in 2003, with workers kicking in $2,412. The premiums on a high-deductible plan will run you 20 to 40 percent less, estimates Herschman.”

If you have such a policy, you or your employer can deposit money in a tax-sheltered account. The idea is that this account will cover some or all of the health care costs you run up before you hit the deductible. Since you will have to pay for the first few thousand dollars of your health care costs, the proponents of HSAs argue, you will be motivated to be a good consumer, and use no more health care than you need. In this way, health care spending will be driven down.

Sounds good, right? A nice, market-oriented solution to a serious problem. (And the idea that liberals are hostile to market-oriented solutions, in general, hasn’t been true for at least fifteen years.) However, this is just one more illustration of Hilzoy’s First Rule of Policy Wonkery: Never, ever rely on slogans instead of looking at the details*.

First, under the Bush administration proposals, employer contributions to HSAs are optional. That means that the account you supposedly get to use to pay your medical bills below the deductible might not exist. You could put the money you save into it, but as noted above, those savings will not cover the whole difference in the deductible. If they don’t, you’ll just pay more.

Second, HSAs will not, in fact, lower health care spending overall. The best study on the issue concludes that “health spending would change by +1% to -2%.” One reason, as Kevin notes, is this:

“the vast bulk of healthcare dollars are spent on people who are extremely sick and quickly blow past even a large deductible anyway. Since HSAs don’t affect that spending at all, it means that, at best, their effect on the total cost of healthcare is probably pretty negligible.”

It’s worth being clear about this. To that end, I have created my first ever chart using Excel (I am so proud), from data found here (see Exhibit 1.11):

From_clipboard

[UPDATE: OK, I blew my chart. Darn. Along the y axis, it should say: percent of health care spending. The idea being that the 1% of the population who spend most on health care account for 22.3% of all health care spending, and so on.]

The top 50% of health care spenders will probably breeze right by their deductible, and will thus be completely impervious to HSAs’ incentives to save money. Any health care savings will have to be gained from the bottom 50% (or from people who will be in the top 50% but don’t yet realize it.) But the bottom 50% accounts for only 3.4% of health care spending. This means that this proposal leaves the overwhelming majority of health care spending absolutely untouched.

More problems below the fold.

Read more

Nice Guys

by

by hilzoy

A few notes about my last post (the one on Maureen Dowd): I didn’t mean to suggest that there were any character traits, let alone major virtues, that are the exclusive province of men. I just read the comments Dowd quoted, about men not having any occasion to display their manliness etc., and thought: they seem to have something in mind, and it would be churlish to reply: so I take it you’ve stopped being an exhibitionist? or something like that. What is this something? Apparently, it seems to have to do with things like strength and courage. But why would anyone think that there is no occasion for strength and courage, rightly construed? I was assuming that any decent version of manliness would not actually be defined as “what women are not”, but would involve some positive ideal worth pursuing in itss own right, whether or not women were doing something similar. Debitage suggests that I am wrong:

“The macho impulse is a drive not just to do things that are intrinsically good for men, but to do things that distinguish men from women. This is why so much of machismo is wrapped up in policing border-blurring behavior, such as homosexuality and uppity women. Therefore it’s only manly to have strength if women are typically weak. If women can be strong too, men will have to find a different reason to be strong (and plenty of such reasons exist).”

If so, then I agree that men should give up on this whole set of motivations. No one’s psyche should actually require the weakness of others. I was hoping that there was a better way to respond to the guys Dowd quoted; but if I’m wrong, well then, I’m wrong.

(I also did not mean to suggest that my being single was the result of my not being pert, winsome, etc. (Wouldn’t it be convenient to think so!) I tend to put it down to a combination of My Many Faults and the vagaries of my personal history. I’m just not in a good position to be a counterexample to Dowd’s thesis, is all.) (Also: I should know better than to write posts while I’m rushing around getting ready to catch a train.)

All that said: the comments on that thread have now turned to a discussion of these comments:

(a): “Those of us who aren’t bastards typically find that most women take no romantic interest in us”

(b) “As a lesbian, of course, I have no direct interest in this matter. But I can tell you that the straight women of my acquaintance say the worst turn-off is a man who makes a big point of how much of a nice, non-sexist guy he is, and then expects women to be grateful and appreciative of this. A remarkable number of men don’t seem to have grasped the point that women don’t like to be told, either explicitly or implicitly, that they should be grateful to men for treating them like mature adult human beings.”

My take on this question below the fold.

Read more

Question Of The Day

by

by hilzoy Answer: Yes. So why, exactly, did Maureen Dowd need to write an entire book about it? I suppose the answer must be: because she needed to have place to put things like this: “Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men, it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to … Read more

Patrick Fitzgerald

by

by hilzoy “Fontenelle says, “I bow before a great man, but my mind does not bow.” I can add: before a humble common man in whom I perceive uprightness of character in a higher degree than I am conscious of in myself, my mind bows, whether I want it or whether I do not and … Read more

Ah, How It Takes Me Back…

by

by hilzoy From Brad DeLong: “When the Fifteen-Year-Old asked, “Why is so much of Africa so poor?” he was not expecting–and did not react well to–a dramatic reading of parts of James Ferguson (1999), Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley: University of California: 0520217020).” Growing up as … Read more

Rosa Parks

by

by hilzoy Rosa Parks died yesterday. We are all in her debt. May she rest in peace. “The only thing that bothered me was that we waited so long to make this protest and to let it be known wherever we go that all of us should be free and equal and have all opportunities … Read more

Cheney: The CIA Needs The Freedom To Abuse Detainees!

by

by hilzoy WaPo: “The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody. The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to … Read more

Late Night Plame-Related Scowling

by

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

“I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday. Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war. Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status. It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry. (…)

The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program. But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald’s possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson – who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame – from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House’s full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought. The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson’s wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband’s trip.”

A few points:

Read more

Being Gay In Namibia

by

by hilzoy

Here’s the sort of story that makes me love the Washington Post, and all other newspapers that have staffs large enough that they can cover interesting topics in obscure places. It’s on gay rights activists in Namibia:

“As a boy of 14, Petrus Gurirab worried that he was gay. Seeking advice from a trustworthy adult, he went to see a teacher who had treated him kindly.

“I have feelings for other boys,” Gurirab recalled telling her. “Like love feelings.” There was a long silence.

“My advice is that it’s not African” to be gay, the teacher replied, using a slur for the term. “Ignore those feelings and try girls.”

She also apparently gossiped with colleagues. Other teachers started teasing Gurirab, asking him why he didn’t play soccer and why he spent so much time around his mother. Then one morning, he said, the gym teacher invited him into his office, locked the door and forced him onto the desk for sex.

“Let’s see how good you are at it,” the teacher said, according to Gurirab, now 25, who recounted the story through tears. The ordeal left his legs and arms with red bruises. The next day, distraught and confused, he had sex with a female classmate.”

I’m sure she had a marvelous time. Back to the story:

“”I wanted to change so badly and not be gay . . . but I couldn’t,” he said. “I knew I liked men. I decided I would kill myself. . . . I was so desperate I called a lifeline in London. They saved my life.”

Un-African. Un-Christian. Anti-family. Witchcraft.

In many African countries, being gay is considered all of those things. It is also illegal in most of them, so taboo that a conviction for homosexual acts may bring more jail time than rape or murder. Only in South Africa is being gay widely accepted and protected by law. From Uganda, where homosexuality is punishable by life imprisonment, to Sierra Leone, where a lesbian activist was raped and stabbed to death at her desk last year, homophobia has long trapped gays in a dangerous, closeted life. With no places to meet openly, no groups to join, it seems sometimes that gay men and lesbians in Africa don’t exist at all.

But in Namibia, a growing national debate about homosexuality has followed a period of harsh condemnation, and gay rights groups now operate openly in the capital, Windhoek. One of them is the Rainbow Project, where Gurirab works as a suicide prevention counselor. The organization has interviewed gay Africans from across the continent, and its leaders say they believe the time is right to challenge prejudices and start a wider discussion on what being gay really means. “The only answer is education,” said Linda Baumann, 21, who grew up in a tribal community and was expelled from it when she revealed she was a lesbian. She now lives in Windhoek and hosts a radio program about gay issues. “We have to have courage and stick up for ourselves.””

Read more

“Moral Values” In Tucson

by

by hilzoy Via AmericaBlog, a story in the Arizona Daily Star: “Although it is safe, effective and legal, emergency contraception – the “morning after” pill – can be hard to find in Tucson. After a sexual assault one recent weekend, a young Tucson woman spent three frantic days trying to obtain the drug to prevent … Read more

Bernanke For Fed Chair

by

by hilzoy WaPo: “President George W. Bush was expected to announce on Monday that he has picked top economic adviser Ben Bernanke to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a knowledgeable source said. (…) Bernanke is chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. He served on the Fed’s Board of Governors for nearly three years … Read more

Priorities

by

by hilzoy

I never did write more about bird flu. (Short version: the person in charge of the federal response is unqualified; despite the fact that the GAO has been urging (pdf) the government to finish its response plan since 2000, it still isn’t finished; and the NYT, which has seen a copy of the latest version of the plan, reports that it “shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation’s history”, as well as failing to address such crucial questions as who would be in charge. Great.)

Tonight, I want to write about an important background issue: public health spending. Via Effect Measure, here’s an article in Government Health IT:

“As state and local health departments gear up to battle a possible avian flu outbreak, they face a sharp cut in funding from the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the loss could be fixed through funds intended to cover the costs of controlling a pandemic, added as an amendment to the 2006 Defense Department Appropriations bill.

“Critical funding is shrinking just as public health agencies are being required to expand their work in pandemic influenza preparation and response,” said Dr. Rex Archer, health director of Kansas City, Mo., and president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

The Bush administration, in its proposed 2006 HHS budget, slashed funding for public health preparedness by $129 million — from $926 million in 2005 to $797 million. The House version of the 2006 HHS bill appropriates $853 million while the Senate bill sticks with the$797 million requested by the administration.

Donna Brown, government affairs counsel at NACCHO, said those state and local preparedness funds provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an HHS agency, are used for a wide range of activities by local health departments, including information technology and disease surveillance systems.

“We need robust electronic information systems to detect disease outbreaks,” Brown said, including surveillance systems that can alert local public health officials to potential flu symptoms. Those would be critical to helping combat a pandemic.

Congress should not be cutting preparedness funds as “we face a potential health emergency,” Brown said. He believes Congress should reverse any cuts proposed by the administration. The Senate and House HHS bills are still in conference and need to be passed by Nov. 15, when a continuing resolution to fund government operations in fiscal 2006 expires.”

Well, no, of course it shouldn’t. But, also of course, it is.

Read more

NY Daily News: Bush Knew

by

by hilzoy Honest to God, I don’t want to keep writing about the Plame investigation. I wish Patrick Fitzgerald would just announce its results already, and put us out of our misery. However, every time I say: enough, I want to write about something else, some new piece of information comes along that I can’t … Read more

Great Books

by

by hilzoy Time has posted a list of the top 100 novels written in English since 1923. (Why 1923? Apparently, it’s when Time started publishing. Who knew?) It’s a really strange list, even granting what seems to be their rule of not naming more than one book by any author. I mean: why would anyone … Read more

Tierney: Wrong Again

by

by hilzoy

Since, for reasons I do not fully understand, I still have access to TimesSelect, here’s an excerpt from John Tierney’s column today:

“This case, if you can remember that far back, began with accusations that White House officials violated a law protecting undercover agents who could be harmed or killed if their identities were revealed. But it now seems doubtful that there was a violation of that law, much less any danger to the outed agent, Valerie Wilson.

The case originally aroused indignation because the White House appeared to be outing Wilson as part of a campaign to unfairly discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of ignoring his 2002 report debunking evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire material for nuclear weapons. But a Senate investigation found that his report not only failed to reach the White House but also failed to debunk the nuclear-material evidence – in fact, most analysts concluded the report added to the evidence.

So now the original justifications for the investigation have vanished, which is why I think of this as the Nadagate scandal. But the prosecutor has kept at it for two years. Besides switching to the vague law against disclosing classified information, he might indict Libby or Rove for perjury or obstruction of justice – crimes that occurred only because of the investigation.”

Wrong, Tierney. This case did not begin because of accusations that anyone had violated a specific law. It began with accusations that someone in the administration had outed an undercover CIA agent. Those accusations were true. The case aroused indignation not just, or even primarily, because the White House outed Plame to discredit Wilson, which is also true, whatever his report did or did not say. It aroused indignation because outing undercover CIA agents is wrong under any circumstances, and it’s especially wrong when it’s done not for some reason connected to the national interest, but for political gain. This justification has not “vanished”; it’s still in force, and it is why I have said that whether or not indictments are handed down, this administration acted contemptibly in outing Valerie Plame.

Do apologists for this administration really want to take the line that exposing intelligence assets for political gain is just one of those things that everyone in Washington does; that it’s no big deal? Do they really want to say that what the Republican party stands for is not restoring honor and integrity to the White House, not doing what it takes to keep America safe, not the sort of basic decency that would lead them to stick by people who put their lives on the line for their country, but this? Do they really want to try to rally people behind the slogan, “Compromising national security: everyone does it!” — ? (And for the record, everyone doesn’t. Just try thinking back to the last time an administration outed one of its own agents.)

The reasons why leaking Plame’s identity was wrong are not rocket science. They are obvious, at least if you understand basic moral values like loyalty, decency, and honor. And no party that claims to honor moral values should pretend that outing an undercover CIA agent is just business as usual.

Below the fold, I’m appending a long excerpt from a Stratfor report cited on dKos (h/t rilkefan), just in case Tierney or Richard Cohen or anyone like them should happen by and wonder what the big deal is. (It’s a long excerpt because the original is behind a wall.) It makes the issues very clear.

Read more

Plame Again

by

by hilzoy The Washington Post is running a story headlined: Cheney’s Office Is Focus In Leak Investigation. It begins: “As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney’s office, according to lawyers familiar … Read more

Nudge Nudge; Wink Wink

by

by hilzoy John Fund explains how Karl Rove made sure that religious conservatives knew more about Harriet Miers than the rest of us were supposed to: “On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the nomination. One of the people on … Read more

Give Me A Break

by

by hilzoy Bill Kristol wonders what accounts for the fact that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist (along with Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, various members of the Republican party in Ohio and Kentucky, and others he didn’t see fit to mention) are all the subjects of criminal investigation: “Why are conservative Republicans, … Read more

Unbelievable

by

by hilzoy Before this administration took office, I would have thought that the one thing I could count on Republicans to do right was to take care of the basic needs of our men and women in uniform. “Help is on the way”, Bush said. I suppose I should have remembered that he came from … Read more

The Horror! The Horror!

by

by hilzoy It’s very, very strange: now that the Harriet Miers nomination has set conservatives free to criticize the President, I sometimes find myself agreeing with, well, the Corner. Here, for instance: “Item: On Brit Hume’s show last night, Fred Barnes announced that Miers might have trouble during her hearings, but only if senators set … Read more

In Which I Encounter Andy Card

by

by hilzoy

Billmon has an interesting post about his encounters with Andy Card, President Bush’s unlikely chief of staff, over the years. It’s the sort of thing I have always wished journalists wrote in the course of doing their jobs: what, exactly, did they think of the various people they dealt with, as persons? Billmon was underwhelmed by Card:

“When I interviewed him, I could tell fairly quickly that a.) he definitely wasn’t the sharpest chisel in the White House toolbox (and this wasn’t exactly the Leonardo da Vinci administration) and b.) he had only the vaguest understanding of what Rollins and company had been up to. Card, in other words, was the patsy in the deal — something he complained about quite openly when we spoke.(…) He struck me as a sad sack, a minor league patronage player who had already reached the level of his own incompetence. A future FEMA administrator, in other words.”

I’m writing this post, despite the fact that it will be almost as content-free as my last one, for two reasons. First, to recommend Billmon’s post to anyone who wants to know who is likely to be Bush’s right-hand man if Rove and Cheney go down. Second, because having read Billmon for quite a while, I am certain that this is the only time when I will be able to say, about anything he writes: well, I can top that.

Specifically: Billmon writes: “I first encountered Card when he was a special assistant in the Reagan White House — having arrived there as a Bush loyalist in 1983.” Well, I first encountered Card when he was a Massachusetts State Representative in 1976. (Not that I made nearly as much of my encounters as Billmon did.)

Read more