You’re amazed that neither the Republicrats nor the Demoblicans — twin avatars of the Great Party of Big Business — didn’t want to discuss cheap foreign labor, the economic prop that supports the whole house of cards?

Some of that is even relevant to the Kimba Wood/Zoe Baird situation. Ron Brown, Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce, had evidently done the same thing, if memory serves. There could be all sorts of reasons why his nomination sailed through, of course: race, a lower-profile position, etc. One of them, however, could well be that his job didn’t involve enforcing the law that he had violated, while the Attorney General’s job most certainly does.

DHS is analogous to Kofi Annan’s job: no real authority, but loads of PR and diplomatic finessing. The only type of person who can be effective in this badly-designed, cluster-f*** of a post is a ruthless, machiavellian Beltway insider with decades of experience on the Hill and in the Executive branch.

It’s a very tall order, probably the tallest in DC. Tom Ridge was a seasoned pol, and he failed to make much of a difference at all. In fact, Ridge’s political career is pretty much finished. This is not a job for anyone but a tough-ass Washington insider at the end of his career. Think Cheney or Rumsfeld, or maybe James Baker. Daniel Moynihan (RIP) or George Schultz might also have been good in this role.

From this perspective, Kerik’s selection could not possibly have been on the merits. My own guess is that the real game here had everything to do with the ambitions of Kerik’s sponsor Giuliani, and with Bush’s calculations of how he and his legacy would benefit from elevating Giuliani to the pol position for 2008. Perhaps Bush thought that if he did this favor for Giuliani’s buddy, Giuliani would move swiftly to pre-empt McCain and knock the latter out of the race early.

Then again, there could be massive corruption that goes way beyond tasers. Kerik was a narc, recall.

Re: the nanny problem, OK, it’s illegal but we aren’t enforceing any of these laws currently. The main objectors to his having done that will be the same people objecting to the enforcement of immigration laws. We stand to lose more than we get by running him off for that reason.

The truth is Kerik is a hard man. I am sure he has made enemies and they probably promised more revelations and accusations if he did not withdraw.

I read that Theodore Roosevelt was Police Commissioner in NYC. When he got the job he fired half of the police in the city. When confronted aobut it he responded by saiying he would have fired them all if he could find enough honest men to take their jobs.

It is a shame. I think he would have been good at the job. Nannies and stock deals are probably only part of what is going on here. But all these guys have gotten rich off their connections. I doubt we will see any poor men up for this job.

ìThe Magic Nanny Excuse

It sure beats ‘I want to spend more time with my family.î

http://slate.msn.com/id/2110806/

Indeed, admitting a nanny problem could allow one to get out the door without revealing more serious problems.

I am still convinced, though, that we must have a dialogue concerning which laws really are important. We often pretend that petty legalisms can underpin our social mores. This is absolutely insane. The much ridiculed Judge Potter Stewart wisely pointed out that pornography, for instance, cannot always be precisely defined but ìI know it when I see it.î

Credit the administration, it does not do scandal. If the cream smells sour in the morning, it’s tossed and you get no cream with the coffee.

The success of the administration is that they don’t do scandal. O sure, there is the Wilson Plame dustup but if ever there was a tempest in a teapot, that is one. And if the press ever regretted the day they called for an independent counsel, this is surely the case what with reporters about to go to jail. The New York Times and Time must be agonizing over their legal fees about now. Legal representation does not come gratias at that level.

This administration is not like Bubba’s where the scandals came along like potholes on a DC street. They simply are too aware that scandals sap government and distract an administration from its policies and pursuits. Of course they are going to be problems but not of the type which arise in a scandal over nannies or a intern in the Oval Office.

This is not an issue addressed by the press. Their perceived Bush scandals are nuanced and policy driven. The David Sangers (Times) and the Dana Milbanks (WaPo) of the White House press corps invent policy differences and contretemps which don’t even approach the level of controversies.

Last night, the liberal PBS press corps was quacking over Rumsfeld’s Iraq press conference and the planted question about armor. One would have thought from ABC’s Martha Raddatz, television’s biggest whiner, that this was Watergate.