Jim Rutenberg at the Washington Post, says,
President Bush is seeking a new chief lawyer with credentials as a proven combatant as he and his staff prepare for a potential raft of investigations from Democrats in Congress who have promised to challenge the White House's conduct of policy and its assertions of executive power.
Republicans who have consulted with administration officials on personnel said the White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, was looking for a seasoned Washington hand to succeed Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel who announced her resignation on Thursday.
Republicans said Friday in interviews that the White House was now, in essence, seeking a politically savvy outsider with ties throughout the capital and in Congress who might be called upon to become something of a public figure in potentially high-profile fights.
Bush's problem is he only hires people who are blindly loyal to him, who tell him what he wants to hear and who are pretty much willing to sell out their soul, their family, and certainly their country to give Dubya whatever he wants. That doesn't generally produce a person who is particularly competent and certainly doesn't produce good advice or a person of integrity.
At this point, any person who takes a job with Bush or his administration deserves to be tarred with a lifetime reputation as a sellout who has no integrity, who will tell a boss what he wants to hear, who has no loyalty to country or values, who has no guts to speak the truth, no courage to stand up to a boss. And this, will, I hope, also apply to all the generals who left Bush's service in good graces, like Tommy Franks.
The good news is, since Bush has proven himself unable to choose competence over almost sociopathic loyalty, it is likely that he will be brining in another incompetent, who will, when the sh*t hits the fan, sell out Bush rather than go down... I hope.
If Bush were smart, which he has consistently proven he is not, he'd do what Karl Rove did-- hire a smart Democrat to represent him. That's why Rove wasn't indicted by Fitzgerald.
The good news is that Miers is leaving because Bush knows that he is in for a lot of battles, that frat boy dubya is out of the frat house (Republican led congress) and into the street and he's going to get his ass kicked-- a sweet, sweet image to consider. The question is, will Bush, a weak, cowardly sort, be able to tolerate the routine, methodical beating the Dems should be planning for him? Will the Dems do what they should do and keep after Bush, week after week, month after month, attacking him, challenging him, accusing, indicting, subpoenaing him and all the sycophantic lackeys around him? If they don't, they will be failing to do their job, failing to take the fight for America to where it should be fought.
