{"id":6817,"date":"2006-03-09T14:26:07","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T19:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6817"},"modified":"2006-03-09T14:26:07","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T19:26:07","slug":"the-mayberry-machiavellis-pick-up-a-new-team-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-mayberry-machiavellis-pick-up-a-new-team-member\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mayberry Machiavellis pick up a new team member"},"content":{"rendered":"

When John DiIulio worked as a domestic policy advisor in the Bush’s White House, he was a serious scholar who expected to find policy professionals running the executive branch. He was sorely disappointed.<\/p>\n

“There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus,” DiIulio said, reflecting on his White House service. “What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”<\/p>\n

It led to a Hackocracy<\/a>, in which top administration positions went to unqualified cronies. What these staffers lacked in skills, they made up for in loyalty to a right-wing cause. Some of the names are familiar (Mike Brown<\/a>), others less so (Hector Barreto<\/a>), but they all have one thing in common — they got key jobs in the administration based on their loyalty to Bush and GOP connections. There might as well have been a “No Policy Experts Need Apply” sign hanging in the West Wing.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the embarrassments of some of these hacks hasn’t curbed the White House’s enthusiasm for the appointments. Consider the latest<\/a> in a series of examples.<\/p>\n

A recent appointment may do little to quiet those complaints: The [Homeland Security Department] announced that a 28-year-old former White House staffer is heading a policy committee that gathers expert advice — on behalf of the president and the Homeland Security secretary — on key areas of homeland security, including threats to infrastructure and preventing terrorist attacks that use weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

Douglas L. Hoelscher is the new executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Committees and the “primary representative” of department Secretary Michael Chertoff in dealing with more than 20 advisory boards. Among them is the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which includes such high-powered figures as Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Lockheed Chairman Norman Augustine, and former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger.<\/p>\n

Hoelscher has no management experience, a review of his professional credentials shows. He came to government in 2001 as a low-level White House staffer, arranging presidential travel, according to news reports.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This guy is getting a powerful post, with daunting responsibilities. Hoelscher will be “contending with formidable voices in U.S. policy-making from the private sector, state and local government, and academia,” all of whom are “titans in their fields.” One group that Hoelscher will be coordinating with is the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, which includes top executives from BellSouth, Boeing, and Microsoft.<\/p>\n

At least Hoelscher fits the ideological profile. His Friendster profile lists William Bennett’s “The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals” as one of his favorite books.<\/p>\n

And now Hoelscher is a right-hand man to the secretary of Homeland Security. Feel safer?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When John DiIulio worked as a domestic policy advisor in the Bush’s White House, he was a serious scholar who expected to find policy professionals running the executive branch. He was sorely disappointed. “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}