Mark Steyn:

...an anti-war deputy secretary of an anti-war department leaking to an anti-war reporter the name of an anti-war analyst who got her anti-war husband a job with an anti-war agency is supposedly an elaborate “conspiracy” by Cheney, Rove and the other warmongers. Looked at more prosaically, it’s a freak intersection of bad personnel decisions, which is one of the worst features of this presidency. So many of the Bush Administration’s wounds come from its willingness to keep the wrong people in key positions: Tenet should not have been retained at the CIA, Armitage should not have been at State.

And Mineta should not have been at DoT.

Yes. One of Bush's biggest flaws as a leader is his unwillingness to fire people.

So more people like Feith, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc. would have made things better? A louder echo chamber? These are the guys Bush should have had fired. Rumsfelds departure has already improved matters. I'm waiting for Cheney to follow. Steyn just wants an expanded war including Iran and Bush isn't biting anymore.

Had more people been "anti war" by being "anti lie" we would not be in this fiasco now.

It is as hard for the far right to figure out that lying is wrong as it is for the far left to figure out that courage is right.

Robert

Jeez, no matter what the question, with some of you people the answer is always, "Bush bad!" Such a firm grasp on empirical reality. I hope you're not practicing medicine or designing bridges.

Executive-branch employees work for the President. If they oppose his policies they should either keep their mouths shut or do the honorable thing and resign. Nobody elected them and they have no right to make their own policy at the expense of the elected official they work for. Bush has been too aloof and gentlemanly in his personnel decisions, but that doesn't excuse subordinates such as Powell, Armitage and Tenet who undermined him relentlessly for their own political purposes.

Bob Novak was anti-war?

Mike brown was a great presidential appointee,

So was Darleen Druyan.

Bob Novak was anti-war?

Iraq war, yes.

Executive-branch employees work for the President. If they oppose his policies they should either keep their mouths shut or do the honorable thing and resign. Nobody elected them and they have no right to make their own policy at the expense of the elected official they work for.

Well stated. This is a case of bureaucrats trying to run the country over elected officials. Bush should have fired them long ago.

Well said indeed, Jonathan.

"Executive-branch employees work for the President."

They work for the United States of America. Those who work for the President are called "staff," and they're limited to White House operations.

"If they oppose his policies they should either keep their mouths shut or do the honorable thing and resign."

I fail to see the honor in either alternative. It is the duty of every appointee to act in the best interests of the United States, and if doing that gets them fired, it's a much smaller price to pay than others have for this country.

"Nobody elected them"

The President chose them and the Senate consented. Presidents can try to appoint loyal cronies, assuming they can swing the Senate, but that doesn't obligate appointees to be cronies.

"Bush has been too aloof and gentlemanly in his personnel decisions"

If his purges were any cruder, the victims would have been summarily executed.

"but that doesn't excuse subordinates such as Powell, Armitage and Tenet who undermined him relentlessly for their own political purposes."

The Glorious Leader is never wrong, only his disloyal subordinates.

It is the duty of every appointee to act in the best interests of the United States...

Let me help, Brian, by noting that it's just about here where you go off the rails and start drooling nonsense.

See, if every employee of the Federal government takes it upon himself to define the best interests of the United States, the result is utter chaos. You've written a dumb prescription for an unworkable anarchy.

To prevent that chaos is why we have a President, and why everyone in the Executive Branch above a certain level serves at his pleasure. The Founders were well aware of the ability and tendency of low-level career employees to sabotage high-level policy they don't like, and they deliberately set up a system to prevent that.

The candidates lay out what they see as the best interests of the United States during the campaign, and we citizens decide whose definition we like. That guy takes office, and from that point on it's his job to implement what he told us, the voters, he would do. It is, furthermore, the job of everyone in the Executive branch to see that his intentions are carried out. If conscience won't let them, then, yeah, they should resign (and maybe write a stinging editorial in the New York Times).

To put it in plainer terms, you're wrong that every Federal employee works for the people. He works for the President, and the President works for the people. Think of it as a chain of command, where we the people are at the top, and the CIA gopher is at the bottom. Remember, then, that if the CIA gopher defies the President, he is defying the will of the people who chose him.

Staying on the job and wreaking havoc from within is the act of a cowardly weasel, someone who values his job higher than the prickings of his conscience. You might as well be a concentration camp guard who stays on the job even after you've seen the ovens (because the pay is good), who rationalizes the decision to himself by saying, well, if I stay I can at least slip extra food to the inmates as they await the gas. Maybe even loosen the pipes a little, delay things a smidge every now and then.

"See, if every employee of the Federal government takes it upon himself to define the best interests of the United States, the result is utter chaos."

The result is citizenship and good government. If a President or appointee doesn't like the decisions his subordinates make, he can fire them, and every responsible public servant takes that into consideration in weighing options. In this country, you own your actions.

"The Founders were well aware of the ability and tendency of low-level career employees to sabotage high-level policy they don't like, and they deliberately set up a system to prevent that."

Precisely, so why are you arguing? A President can fire anyone in the Executive branch at any time for any reason within the law, and acknowledging the duty of employees to be responsible for their actions doesn't change that. In fact, the two statements are inseparable.

"The candidates lay out what they see as the best interests of the United States during the campaign"

Except when they don't.

"and we citizens decide whose definition we like."

That would be nice, if it ever happened. Ultimately democracy comes down to the sum total choices of each individual citizen in performing our chosen roles in society, fulfilling our responsibilities, and recognizing and accepting that all power begins and ends with us--not our elected proxies. And that's even truer for citizens employed by the government, whose actions have a direct affect on the republic as a whole. There is no "following orders" defense in this country, ever.

"If conscience won't let them, then, yeah, they should resign"

They should resign if conscience won't allow them to perform their duty, but their duty is codified in law and not subject to the personal whims and petty ambitions of one man. If their superior's agenda is contrary to the law, they should remain in their position and do their jobs properly until explicitly fired, then report directly to Congress the circumstances of their firing.

"He works for the President, and the President works for the people."

All citizens have the same responsibilities, regardless of what specific authority they have.

"Think of it as a chain of command, where we the people are at the top, and the CIA gopher is at the bottom."

"The people" is not the simple majority of the voting public expressing its will on loaded questions once every two years, it is the discrete set of all individual citizens at all times. Which means it includes CIA gophers, and that in turn implies that their role in the hierarchy is subordinate to the duties of their own citizenship.

After all, we only tolerate such a hierarchy in service to those duties, so it would be illogical to consider it a priori of them. In simpler terms, "Citizen first, employee second."

"Remember, then, that if the CIA gopher defies the President, he is defying the will of the people who chose him."

To claim that merely being elected automatically gives every decision they make the force of public will is equivalent to investiture of national sovereignty--i.e., kingship. Moreover, if a President's policies violate or clandestinely undermine the law, defying them upholds the will of the people by the very nature of a free society.

"Staying on the job and wreaking havoc from within is the act of a cowardly weasel, someone who values his job higher than the prickings of his conscience."

A cowardly weasel would do what he's told, and someone who lacked the courage for confrontation would simply resign, issue a "spend time with my family" press release, and keep himself safely off anyone's enemies list. Also, it's a bit ludicrous to say someone values his job more than his conscience who constantly risks being fired just to perform basic responsibilities.

Precisely, so why are you arguing? A President can fire anyone in the Executive branch at any time for any reason within the law, and acknowledging the duty of employees to be responsible for their actions doesn't change that.

Apparently, your ignorance of civil service rules is as vast as that on most other subjects.

"Apparently, your ignorance of civil service rules is as vast as that on most other subjects."

Rand,
Thank you for injecting this irrelevant pedantry. Allow me to correct myself so you can pretend to have contributed something: The President can fire his *appointees* at any time, which is whom we're discussing. Feel free to chime in again if you want to correct anyone's spelling, critique their grammar, or any other impressive feat of intelligence and wisdom.

As I wrote in a post over on my own blog "Ideas in Progress", I think that one of Bush's problems is that he is a pushover boss. I believe Bush thinks he should be loyal to the people under him, instead of a watchdog over the federal executive branch.

Andrew Jackson said "There are, perhaps, few men who can for any great length of time enjoy office and power without being more or less under the influence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of their public duties... they are apt to acquire a habit of looking with indifference upon the public interests and of tolerating conduct from which an unpracticed man would revolt. Office is considered as a species of property, and government rather as a means of promoting individual interests than as an instrument created solely for the service of the people... In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense." And most Presidents have to one degree or another followed his prescription of cleaning the bureaucratic house and putting his own loyal supporters in government positions. To do otherwise risks exactly what Bush has allowed to happen; an organization that deliberately sabotages its elected overseers to promote the consensus view of the bureaucrats instead of the concensus view of the voters.