Falling On Their Swords

I've been meaning to comment on this for a while but got wrapped up in finals/papers/exams and just didn't have the chance.

Nine of fifteen Cabinet Secretaries have resigned, leaving people scratching their heads as to why its been mostly competent adults leaving, while total incompetents are left behind.

I think the reason is pretty clear. Karl Rove intends to immortalize Dubya as the next Reagan, although to my eyes anyone who really bothers to pay attention that it'd be the cheap, plastic imitation. They are already hard at work building the mythology of Bush's stellar leadership against the throngs of Muslim terrorists, decadent liberals, and cowardly French.

To establish that mythology, they've got to get rid of the bodies, namely anyone who might be associated with a policy success. Four more years of the particular secretary in a job might cause someone to mistake the policy success with the secretary, instead of the president. Here's the rundown of how the Bushies view their policy successes:

State - Successfully thumbed our nose at the UN, the French, the Germans and the rest of our allies. We tossed the docctrine of retaliation in favor of the more masculine pre-emption. Never mind that the world hates us. Plus, Powell was a pussy anyways.

HHS - Got the prescription drug benefit AND let the pharmaceutical industry determine how much to overcharge the taxpayer. Cha-ching!

Energy - Let Kenny-boy decide what our policy would be.

Education - Leave All Kids Behind.

Homeland Security - No terror attacks since 9/11. Yee-haw!

Agriculture - Dismantled meat and other food processing inspections.

Commerce- Delivered a slap on the wrist instead of throwing the book at corporate malfeasance.

Don't know what to make of the others HUD, Interior, Labor, and Transportation. Especially Norm. What the hell is he doing staying on?!

Two that he kept, interestingly enough, are ones where there are miserable policy failures that Scott McClellan, despite his best efforts, can sugar coat for another four years.

Snow will stay at Treasury to become the fall guy for the economy as will Rumsfeld serve as the scapegoat for the miserable failure in Iraq. Two others flew the coop, I think, before Bush could even get a chance to ask them to stay. Ashcroft will not stick around to be responsible for Abu Ghraib - that honor will go to Gonzales who drafted the White House briefs authorizing torture. The Veterans Affairs guy also quit - can you blame him?

Just the kind of American leadership we've come to expect these days - take credit for work that's not yours and blame others for the failures on your watch.