Self-Appointed Critics

Time magazine weighs in this week with a lengthy discourse on political cronyism in the Bush administration. I'd like nothing better than to join the appointee-bashing party in defense of career managers, who do a better job running agencies when they're put in charge. But I can't resist pointing out a few questionable statements in this piece:

• As far back as the Florida recount, soon-to-be Vice President Dick Cheney was poring over organizational charts of the government with an eye toward stocking it with people sympathetic to the incoming Administration. Clay Johnson III, Bush's former Yale roommate and the Administration's chief architect of personnel, recalls preparing for the inner circle's first trip from Austin, Texas, to Washington: "We were standing there getting ready to get on a plane, looking at each other like: Can you believe what we're getting ready to do?"

  Two problems: 1) Transitions always involve filling top political jobs with people friendly to the president. Nothing sinister about that. 2) Johnson's quote is placed to make it sound like he and Cheney were gleefully plotting to stock agencies with hacks, but it sounds a lot more like the typical "Gee, can you believe we're actually in charge?" stuff that incoming White House staffers routinely spout.

• Across the government, some experienced civil servants say they are being shut out of the decision making at their agencies.

  This statement would be true at any point in any administration in the last 150 years.

• As administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, [David] Safavian, 38, was placed in charge of the $300 billion the government spends each year on everything from paper clips to nuclear submarines, as well as the $62 billion already earmarked for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.

  This makes it sound like Safavian signs off on everything the government buys. It's the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, not the central purchasing office. Johnson's statement to Time that Safavian was "by far the most qualified person" for his job is absurd on its face, but not because the job involved deciding which brands of paper clips and nuclear submarines to buy.