I mentioned the other day that the Bush administration's tendency to prioritize loyalty over competence has been at least as damaging to the government as their crazed fiscal management. So I'm glad to see Tom Friedman suggest that his audience read Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City "details [as to] the extent to which Americans recruited to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad were chosen, at times, for their loyalty toward Republicanism rather than expertise on Islamism." Two CPA staffers, for instance, were asked whether they supported Roe v. Wade, assumedly because Iraqis are really concerned over whether the American Constitution includes an implicit right to privacy.
It's tolerance for this sort of politicization of the bureaucracy that I find most enraging about the modern GOP. I can respect disagreements over abortion, taxes, Iraq, and all the rest. I'll fight to win them, but I grant that they're often offered in good faith and real conviction. But part of taking seriously the Republican argument on Iraq is believing that they want our mission their to succeed. And that desire is utterly incompatible with a tolerance for croneyism and the appointment of politicized hacks. That the Bush administration's actions with the CPA never elicited a cry -- much less a hue! -- from the Right is truly distressing.
