An Inside-the-Bushies Mentality

[WillyT]

<snip>

WASHINGTON -- If you read the obituary pages of The Washington Post each morning, you encounter the kinds of people who are being trashed by the Bush administration's contempt for public servants. On a typical day, perhaps a third of the obits feature such people -- career lawyers at the Justice Department; intelligence analysts at the CIA; researchers in government agencies.

These weren't fancy beltway insiders. They weren't famous enough to be asked their opinions on "Hardball'' or "The McLaughlin Group.'' They were civil servants who came to Washington in the 1940s, '50 and '60s with their university degrees and a touch of idealism because they wanted to make a difference. They were the mainstays of the churches and synagogues and volunteer organizations of this region, the people who stayed late to clean up after everybody else had gone home.

Who were they? This week's obits included an 86-year-old research physicist with the Navy, a 57-year-old Justice Department trial lawyer; an 86-year-old administrative law judge; an 85-year-old foreign service officer who served with her husband in Saigon, Kabul and Rome; a 95-year-old woman who was a CIA officer for 25 years; an 87-year-old woman who served as a WAC in World War II and stayed on at the Pentagon. If you've ever talked to people at a retirement home in the Washington area, you know how passionate they can be about good government. They gave up money and prominence because they believed in public service.

What infuriates me about the Bush administration is its disdain for people like these. You sense that scorn reading the e-mails that have surfaced in the flap over the firings of U.S. attorneys. I don't think the story is much of a scandal. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and he can fire whomever he wants. What interests me about the Justice e-mails is that they are a piece of sociology, documenting the mindset of the young hotshots and ideologues who populate the Bush administration.

And...

The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against -- a club of insiders who seem to think that they're better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively. They are a smug, inward-looking elite that thinks it knows who the good guys are by the political labels they wear.

<snip>

Link: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/03/the_gop_is_the_party_of_arroga.html

While I disagree with Ignatius on the magnitude of the prosecutor scandal, I do appreciate him reminding us of the quiet distinction with which so many public servants, from many generations, have served.

[grasswire]

1. he needs to say the word UNAMERICAN

That's what they are. Say the word. UNAMERICAN.

The populace understands exactly what that means.