NYT editorial: Their Master’s Voice: Bush's "loyalty" to his lackeys

[DeepModem Mom]

Their Master’s Voice
Published: May 19, 2007

In March 2004, the acting attorney general distrusted Alberto Gonzales so much that he wouldn’t meet with him at the White House without a witness. Eight months later, President Bush promoted Mr. Gonzales from White House counsel to attorney general, the top law enforcement job in the land. The president is still standing by his man, ignoring Mr. Gonzales’s efforts to mislead Congress, his disregard for the Constitution and his gross neglect of even basic bureaucratic duties.

It’s a familiar pattern: Mr. Bush sticks by his most trusted aides no matter how evident it is — even to the Republican Congressional chorus — that they are guilty of incompetence, bad judgment, malfeasance or all three. (George Tenet, the director of central intelligence; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and the Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers spring to mind.)

Each time, we’re told Mr. Bush repays loyalty with loyalty. We’re told it’s a sign of character.

We don’t buy the explanation. The more persuasive answer is that Mr. Bush protects his embattled advisers because they are doing precisely what he told them to do.

Mr. Tenet was not off freelancing on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He delivered what the White House wanted: claims that sounded dire enough to herd Americans into war....

Mr. Rumsfeld wasn’t conducting a rogue operation when he planned the war in Iraq. He gave the president his victory on the cheap, which could be presented to Americans as sacrifice-free. When the plan literally exploded in the faces of an undermanned, poorly armored and badly led American force, Mr. Rumsfeld did Mr. Bush’s bidding by denying failure after failure. The president stuck by him until the 2006 campaign ended in the one condition that trumps loyalty in the Bush family playbook: losing an election....

Now we know that there is powerful evidence that Ms. Miers helped to orchestrate the political purge of United States attorneys....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/opinion/19sat1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin