This piece by Noam Scheiber on Bush's extended cronyism makes a very good point:
It's the second kind of cronyism--call it "outer-circle cronyism"--that's truly destructive. The focus here isn't so much on handing out jobs to dubiously qualified friends and associates--that is, to one's own cronies. It's on handing out jobs to cronies of cronies, which increases the scale of the cronyism exponentially.
He goes on to list examples, which you should go on to read. But rather than recondemning Bush for Michael Brown, fun as that may be, the point to be made here is different. Brown's appointment and Bush's cronyism shouldn't surprise, they should be expected, and the fact that so many are gaping in open-mouthed awe at Bush's cavalier attitude towards appointments just shows that America has some serious dissonance between what they elect and who they think they're voting for.
