THE SPREAD OF INCOMPETENCE UNDER PRES. FREDO

I think Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary, was the first to point the dysfunctional character of the Executive Branch under Bush/Cheney (or at least the first I became aware of) and initially I thought this was just a power grab by Cheney and to a lesser extent Rumsfeld. Later, I read of John Dilulio's opinions of the politicization of the executive Branch and in particular the lack of serious policy discussion: "There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis,.." Dilulio came to refer to them as Mayberry Machiavellis:

staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.

After this, Larry Wilkerson and Richard Armitage went public and pointed out that this incompetence extended beyond economic and social issues to the far graver matters of national security.

David Metcalfe then exposed the politicization and incompetence in the Justice Department and most recently, Alan Greenspan described the WH as fundamentally unserious: "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences."

Is it any wonder that Pres. Fredo will be remembered as a "miserable failure"?