Have you noticed, Gentle Reader, that there doesn’t seem to be anybody in Our Only President’s administration who has any future in the Republican Party? I mean, you never know, but it sure looks like Condoleeza Rice and Michael Chertoff and the rest of them will be on the outside looking in. Oh, sure, it’s possible that Margaret Spellings will run for Governor of Texas in a few years, and she might even win a primary, but I wouldn’t count on it.
How does that happen? I mean, other than all their failures, of course. I mean, in Our Previous President’s administration, there was Al Gore, of course, who was Candidate Presumptive, but also Bill Richardson, Donna Shalala, Alexis Herman, Andrew Cuomo, Robert Rubin, Anthony Lake, Sandy Berger and Robert Reich. Looking at that crew, you had to assume that there would be at least a couple of future Governors, Senators and Cabinet Officials in there, right?
Previous to him, there was George Herbert Walker Bush, with former golden boy Dan Quayle, but also Lawrence Eagleburger, Liddy Dole, Lamar Alexander, Jack Kemp, Andrew Card, Dick Thornburgh, and even Dick Cheney (although that last was, I think, assumed to be at the end of his distinguished *ahem* career). Ronald Reagan had the aforementioned George Herbert Walker Bush, the aforementioned Dick Thornburgh and Liddy Dole, and Ann McClaughlin (that was), William Bennett, Jim Baker, George Shultz, Colin Powell and Al Haig, all of whom had bright futures, as far as I can remember. And speaking of remembering, I have no idea whether Jimmy Carter’s gang were considered to be through, but even he had Walter Mondale, who was, for better or worse, the face of the Party in 1984. I suspect that Joe Califano, Cyrus Vance and even Zbigniew Bryzinski would have been seen as future cabinet members and advisors, even if not really ideal for elective office. President Carter’s people were through, of course, but it wasn’t obvious that they were through. It’s obvious that Our Only President’s cabinet are through, even if it turns out (the Lord forbid) that they’re not.
I don’t know if it means anything, really, but of course I keep hocking about James Madison’s genius in harnessing individual ambition to effective government. This government is saying balls to Mr. Madison in more ways than that, but it just seems ... odd. I mean, one of the things that pushes a President to stay popular (and there aren’t many, really) is the ambition of his associates, who want a popular presidential administration on their resumes. This group have hitched their wagons not to the Party but to the man, and although they will, I’m sure, be happy enough to land in their corporate featherbeds, their ride in government seems to be through. It’ll be interesting to see, over the next year and a half, whether the Republican candidates keep their distance from the rest of Our Only President’s cabal of incompetents and criminals, and whether that cabal starts looking for another star.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I looked at “Zbigniew Bryzinski” and thought that must be the highest-scoring Scrabble name in the history of American politics. Then I Googled him and found his name has a third Z: Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Also, his Wikipedia article has one of the most humorous photo captions I’ve ever read: “President Jimmy Carter and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, 16 June 1979, in Washington D.C. Zbigniew Brzezinski is directly behind President Carter and is the only person smiling in the picture.”
i think working for the permanent transformation of the country into a republican stronghold is ambitious.
Perhaps, these days, the kind of corporate featherbed one might land in after a ride in the G. W. Bush administration is a higher ambition than extending a distinguished career of public service? For the riders in question, that is.