Suggestions for the White House Director for Lessons Learned

July 13, 2006

National Journal published a list this week of salaries for the several hundred political appointees who work at the White House. As TP noted, one guy, [tag]Stuart Baker[/tag], makes $106,641 a year to serve as the president’s “[tag]Director for Lessons Learned[/tag].” It is, by any reasonable measure, the most patently absurd title in Washington.

It’s not altogether clear what, if anything, Baker actually does. Poking around, I found that he was a former NSA general counsel and the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security before taking on his current job, but there’s no reported evidence of him actually having done anything at the White House. Is the [tag]Bush[/tag] gang still looking for those learned lessons?

Regardless, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) thinks we should save some money, eliminate Baker’s post, and consider “a few of the lessons this [tag]White House[/tag] should have learned by now.”

Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you’re going to war without enough troops.

Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it’s time to demand a little accountability.

Lesson 3: When you’ve ‘turned the corner’ in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

Maybe we should compile a list and send it to Baker. I’m sure he’d appreciate the assistance.

I actually think that the “Director for Lessons Learned” is doing a fine job. After all, we haven’t invaded North Korea yet, have we?

  • Lesson: The 4th largest budget deficit in US history is not something to brag about.

    Lesson: If you tell the public “this government will not wiretap phones without a warrant,” you should probably mean it.

    Lesson: If you tell the public “anyone in my administration involved in leaking the identity of a CIA agent will no longer be in my administration,” you should probably mean it.

    Lesson: gay marriage and flag burning amendments are not the tools used by a “uniter.”

    Lesson, last week: Scott Foresman Language Arts (4th Grade), workbook chapter 12. This week, we’ll see if we can master chapter 13.

  • Baker doesn’t seem to have accomplished anything because KG hasn’t learned anything….

  • Former General Counsel for the NSA.

    I can just see the conversation:

    Baker: I’m sorry Mr. Gonzales, but I don’t think your domestic spying program is constitutional.

    Gonzales: Well, Mr. Baker, would you change you mind if we gave you a $100,000 do nothing job at the White House?

    Baker: Oh, well, in that case, I suppose domestic spying is constitutional.

    Gonzales: Then we’re agreed.

    Baker: So, Mr. Gonzales, what are you getting?

    Gonzales: I get to be Attorney General.

  • It seems the only lesson people in this White House have learned is “The President Is Always Right”, as Justice Department lawyer Steven Bradbury testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Disgusting.

  • It is, by any reasonable measure, the most patently absurd title in Washington.

    Maybe I should crank up the Ministry of Funny Walks and see if I can get some of that money!

    With a tip of the hat to Monty Python. (Cause you know I’m not at all like ann coulter)

  • When you say, “Mission Accomplished” make reasonably sure that the mission can ever be accomplished.

  • If a briefer tells you that “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.,” then Bin Laden is determined to strike in the U.S.

    If your own Department of Energy tells you that those aluminum tubes are not for making nukes, you might want to cool it with the talk about mushroom clouds.

    If you say “we do not torture,” you should use every ounce of power that the office of the President affords you to make sure that we are not, in fact, torturing and killing detainees.

  • Quagmires don’t happen because of left-wing journalists. Quagmires don’t happen because of left-wing cut-and-runners. Quagmires don’t happen because the anti-Christian, pro-hedonism, pro-choice, burn-the-flag, gay-marriage, save-the-whales-and-trees crowd have taken over the gummint. Quagmires happen when egomaniacs who can’t get it up anymore seek one last stimulus for their failing manhood by ordering our troops to take one side in someone else’s civil war and then lack the courage to call it quits.

  • The Dems should use the data from the NJ article to complement their minimum-wage campaigns. How do you make the link between the Prez and the polarization of incomes in the country? Easy: show what he does with the salaries he controls. Big raises for the political hacks, zilch for the receptionists.

  • I did some Googling on Baker.

    Baker was the General Council for NSA from 1992 until 1994. That would make him a Bush I hold over in the first Clinton administration. However, the lesson that BushCo. showed it had learned when it brought Baker back into federal government from private practice is, don’t waste a good toady. Here is an interesting story from 2000 which shows that Baker is a Cheney soulmate.

    Battle lines between companies trying to restore privacy to telecommunications and those who have worked secretly to keep networks “surveillance friendly” have been exposed at two recent conferences.

    “In the long term, privacy is doomed”, the second International Security Solutions Europe Conference was told in Barcelona, Spain last week by U.S. lawyer Stuart Baker, of Washington law firm Steptoe and Johnson.

    “When it’s gone, I don’t think we will notice”, he said.

    Mr Baker, who served as the General Counsel (senior lawyer) of the U.S. National Security Agency from 1992-1994, began his speech in “anonymous” disguise, wearing a large black cycle mask and a baseball cap turned back to front. He made a series of rude remarks about himself and others, in an attempt to show the dangers of what he called “the anonymity industry”. The audience appeared baffled by his conduct.

    Mr Baker had spent the early and mid-1990s campaigning for the acceptance of the NSA’s plan for the CLIPPER chip, which would encrypt private phone conversations but make the keys accessible to the US government. In Barcelona, he claimed that the US Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis had produced major judgments on privacy because he was upset when a friend of his found that his daughter’s party invitation list had been published in a newspaper. Judge Brandeis coined the celebrated definition of privacy as “the right to be left alone”.

  • Blaming the Clinton administration for your problems only makes you look petty, sophmoric, and just plain stupid

  • When you have made as more bad decisions than Michael Jackson, done brag about being the decider.

  • When you have made as more bad decisions than Michael Jackson, done brag about being the decider.

    When you have made more bad decisions than Michael Jackson, done brag about being the decider.

    Bonus Lesson: When you have made as many typos and bad edits as rege, don’t brag about being a writer.

  • If anyone needs any proof of how low Bush will stoop to deny wrongdoing, or even assume ANY responsibility, I’d say this is it.

    Bush can’t even learn himself a “lesson” on his own. He needs someone to do the learning FOR him. So if Bush then makes a stupid mistake twice, as is his wont, he can just pass the buck (as is also his wont) to a position TAILOR-MADE for passing the buck. Bush didn’t learn nothin’, because his Director of Lessons Learned didn’t tell him what lessons he ought to have learned. It’s almost like a rich lazy kid failing an English test because the person he hired to take his notes in class used too many big words he didn’t understand…wow, THAT’S meta.

    Never has a bubble been so fortified as the one surrounding our Vainglorious Leader.

  • slappymagoo. Right On.

    Too bad the Democrats don’t have a position like that.

    We might have actually put up a candidate that could have beaten Bush. Maybe we will learn this time and keep Hillary off the ballot, keep Gore off the Ballot, Keep Obama off the ballot.

    Not that they wouldn’t make great presidents, but this country is just not going to elect a woman, a black man, or a election loser to the white house.

  • This guy is probably like Brownie. A crony “who is doing a heck of a job”. What the hell do we need this for-Bush wouldn’t listen to any suggestion anyways!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

  • “Not that they wouldn’t make great presidents, but this country is just not going to elect a woman, a black man, or a election loser to the white house.” – ScottW

    I agree with “woman” and “black man”….but look at history, dude. “This country” elected the ultimate loser to the White House– twice.

    (I refer, of course, to Richard M. Nixon.)

    And in case you weren’t paying attention, we (well, not “we”, but “they”) put another loser in our White House back in 2000.

    To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, giving these guys political power is like giving a half-gallon of whiskey and the car keys to a couple of teenaged boys.

  • If you want to retaliate for 9/11, go after the people who did the deed. Dont just attack any arab country. Have they learned where the Weapons of Mass destruction were yet?

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