Example of Monica Goodling worries me most

During the JFK administration they brought “the best and the brightest” into government. The Bush administration’s goal seems to be to pack all branches of government and agencies with “Bushies,” those who are big-time donors or who pass religious and ideological litmus tests. Experience and competence seem to count for little.

We have many examples of this: FEMA head Michael Brown, ex-UN Ambassador John Bolton, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, soon to be ex-President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz (the “architect of the Iraq War” who is now embroiled in a corruption scandal for doubling his girlfriend’s salary at the World Bank, during a time when he’s trying to convince the world about the need to stamp out corruption) and now Attorney General Albert Gonzales.

Although Gonzales richly deserves to be included in this group, it’s the example of Monica Goodling that worries me most. She resigned her high-ranking post at the Justice Department after it became public that she was the person responsible for evaluating the US attorneys. The standards were not performance-based but how loyal a “Bushie” they were. It should be noted that all 93 were loyal Republicans when appointed by Bush.

What qualifications does Goodling have to make the evaluations? She’s only 33 years old, had never worked as a prosecutor and is a graduate of Regent University, a fourth-rate evangelical law school founded by Pat Robertson (who predicted earthquakes and other biblical catastrophes as a result of Disneyland allowing gays into their amusement park). The most startling fact to come out during the investigation is that there are 150 graduates from that fourth-rate law school who have been brought into the administration.

Liberal or conservative, I don’t care as much as long as they are intelligent and competent in their fields of expertise. Of course, President Bush himself heads the list of those who are ill-prepared, incompetent and stubbornly attached to ideological goals long after they’ve been proven wrong. Do the remaining 30 percent who still support Bush really think that this is the best we can do as a country?

Jon Monday