Friday, March 24, 2006

The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne gets a lesson

WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne set out today to ridicule President Bush for a comment Bush made at his recent news conference.

Dionne’s ridicule required he tell readers something about how the federal government works. When he did that, Dionne looked very uninformed.

At that point writer and blogger Michael M. Bates provided Dionne with some important information.

Here’s what happened.

Dionne began his column thundering:

Is President Bush the leader of our government, or is he just a right-wing talk-show host?

The question comes to mind after Bush's news conference this week in which he sounded like someone who has no control over the government he is in charge of. His words were those of a pundit inveighing against the evils of bureaucrats.

"Obviously," said the critic in chief, "there are some times when government bureaucracies haven't responded the way we wanted them to, and like citizens, you know, I don't like that at all."
Dionne then tried for to ridicule the President by asking a rhetorical question: “Yes, and if you can't do something about it, who can?”

That drew Bates into the matter. He offered Dionne this:
The possible answer, one which some folks won't like, is that no single person - including a president - can do very much about it.

There are currently 1.8 million civilian federal employees. Of those, a president appoints fewer than 3,000.

Anyone acquainted with the workings of the federal government realizes how difficult and time-consuming it is to terminate an employee, even with cause. In short, the president is stuck with what he has.

Yes, through his appointments a president can have some general impact on policies. But to expect him to be able to "do something about it" when the bureaucracy, as it is wont to do, stumbles simply isn't realistic.

Mr. Bush is no more federal workers' manager than he is a right-wing talk-show host.
I hope Bates and others like him help Dionne to realize he needs to be well-informed before he ridicules anyone, particularly the President of the United States.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, people like(d) to make fun of Bush's dad for not knowing about supermarket scanners. (It wasn't true, but people liked the story.) It was supposed to show how out of touch the Bush's were.

But it is pretty clear that high end, extremely well paid ($1M+/year?) MSM folk have little contact with the real world.

Clearly EJD doesn't do his own taxes, go to the post office, file his own FIA's, or fill out unemployment forms (we wish!).

The general inability to understand the branches of the gov't, the division between local/state/federal, and the role of religion in society is another topic!

-AC