I'VE GOT TO...

I'VE GOT TO ADMIT IT'S GETTING BETTER... Steve Clemons takes the ascension of David Gordon to the deputy slot beneath Condi as an opportunity to wax rhapsodic about the new breed of managers and technocrats steering the Bush administration:

The constructive players in the administration, at this point, include people like Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten (he has made HUGE difference in general change of course of this administration away from Cheneyesque pugnaciousness), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary John Negroponte (yes -- for all the critics who have a problem with Negroponte, you need to take another look -- he is winning bureaucratic battles for Condi now against Cheney's team), Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns (whose success at 'lots' of new international deal-making that was preempted in the last few years make him a great potential successor to Bob Barker on The Price is Right), Legal Adviser John Bellinger, and now David Gordon succeeding Stanford's Stephen Krasner in George Kennan's famous job.Others on the side of light include Secretary of Defense Bob Gates who is strongly backing the Diplomatic Team (and by reports I've received is in the clear lead -- though not demanding credit -- in laying out a new strategic road map for American interests in the Middle East). Gordon England, Deputy Secretary of Defense, is running DoD far more competently than Paul Wolfowitz did. Mike McConnell at the Directorate of National Intelligence and Michael Hayden have completely turned around a convulsing, dysfunctional intelligence establishment that was being ravaged and distorted by Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone into something far more ordered and constructively supportive of the current foreign policy and national security missions.

But the Bush administration hasn't been held back by mere incompetence. There's also a healthy dollop of malevolence and sabotage emanating from Cheney's lair (take a left past his Dark Hordes, and it's the door after the Feeding Room):

There are a lot of new good people -- working together finally -- in this administration. But Vice President Cheney, and his national security spearcarriers -- David Addington, John Hannah, and David Wurmser -- will be out there to sabotage and oppose [Gordon] at every turn. These rivals can't be seduced to support David Gordon's logic. They need to be out run, embarrassed, exhausted, pushed out of the room, or crushed.

It's a bit hard for a director of planning at the State Department to "crush" a vice-president. So, in the end, it comes down to Bush, as it always does. To believe the next year-and-a-half will be different, you need to believe that the past six have taught him something. And I'll believe that when I see it. Remember: Condi's last deputy was Robert Zoellick, now the head of the World Bank, and a competent realist whose ascension was met with great relief and celebration among foreign policy types -- much like Gordon. The last two years have been a mess even so.

--Ezra Klein