NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER: A Matter of Competence
Regnery, Alfred S.
NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER A Matter of Competence by Alfred S. Regnery THERE HAS LONG BEEN a consensus among American voters that Republicans are a competent lot. When they set out to...
...United States Attorneys, who are political appointees and serve “at the pleasure of the President,” can of course be fired for any reason, or no reason, at any time...
...U.S...
...But without competence, and without competent appointments, principle is not enough...
...Mr...
...Following on Brownie’s heels was the nomination of Harriet Miers, a lawyer who may have been able to run 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2007 the Texas Bar Association but had no business having anything to do with the Supreme Court, and who selfimmolated within weeks...
...Yet today, after bungled logistics in Iraq, incompetent public diplomacy, and an arrogant attitude toward the rest of the world, we are held in virtual contempt by our most loyal allies, and the Islamic world wants virtually nothing to do with us...
...Alfred S. Regnery,publisher of The American Spec tator, is writing a book on the conservative movement...
...How many political races have been won over the years by Republicans campaigning against Jimmy Carter’s economy and the hostage crisis in Iran, or against LBJ’s conduct of the Vietnam War amid growing domestic turmoil...
...I do not need to see pictures...
...credibility remained high for the rest of the century—tarnished a bit during the Clinton years, to be sure—and emerging from 9/11 the United States had as much good will in the world as at virtually any time in recent history...
...Bush is, in many ways, a man of principle...
...It is too early to know what the cost will be or how long it will take to regain it, but it is certain that whoever the standard-bearer in 2008 turns out to be, he will need to demonstrate that, regardless of his principles, he will competently deliver what the taxpayers have paid for...
...As everyone knows by now, Bill Clinton fired all 93 U.S...
...During the Cuban Missile Crisis, an American diplomat offered to show pictures of Soviet missiles to French President Charles de Gaulle, lest he doubt that they were really 90 miles from the U.S...
...The Pew Research Center, which conducts regular polls concerning attitudes about politicians, asks people, in one word, to describe their impression of the President...
...When they set out to do something, they usually engage the best people and figure out how to get the job done...
...Attorneys in one fell swoop, and nobody even questioned what he was doing...
...The matter was hardly mentioned in the press...
...An experienced and competent attorney general (and it strains credulity to include Janet Reno in that category) would never have allowed matters to get so out of hand...
...In March, the word was “incompetent...
...Alberto Gonzales’s greatest achievement as attorney general may have been to create a scandal where none existed, and to continue to exacerbate it the farther he got into it...
...no options or suggestions are offered...
...NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER A Matter of Competence by Alfred S. Regnery THERE HAS LONG BEEN a consensus among American voters that Republicans are a competent lot...
...If the President of the United States says there are missiles,” said de Gaulle, “then I know there are missiles...
...If the perception of incompetence did not start with the Katrina disaster in August 2005, it certainly got a boost as the country watched scenes of vast devastation intensified only by a government incapable of dealing with it, and the President’s never-to-be-forgotten praise—“Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job”—of his crony head of FEMA Michael Brown...
...Voters believed that it was the Republicans who could make government work, keep spending under control, manage national security, and even end wars that Democrats had started...
...The so-called scandal at the Department of Justice is only the most recent case in point...
...The President has squandered one of the right’s greatest assets...
...It is one of the great tragedies of George W. Bush’s administration that this perception has changed...
...Until last February, the word most associated with President Bush was “honest...
Vol. 40 • May 2007 • No. 4
