Op/Ed by Eric Mink
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 1, 2006

Five years down and three to go, George W. Bush declares that his desperate, laws-be-damned tactics are working against international terrorism, and he pleads for patience with his wayward war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Bush’s minions have been waging war much more quietly — and much more effectively — against the very concept of public service in government here at home.

Over the weekend, one of these domestic battles erupted, uncharacteristically, into view. James E. Hansen, a widely respected climate scientist who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the New York Times that Bush political appointees have ordered PR fl acks to squelch his public comments about the dangers of global warming. Hansen apparently believes that as a scientist working for the government, his obligation is to tell the public what he learns about issues of public importance.

Hansen’s charges were denied by NASA executives but backed up by Leslie McCarthy, a PR official, and others who work with Hansen at the Goddard facility in upper Manhattan. McCarthy told the Times about pressure she’s received about Hansen from George Deutsch, a Bush political appointee at NASA headquarters in Washington. Deutsch told her that his job was “to make the president look good,” McCarthy told the Times. “I’m a career civil servant, and Jim Hansen is a scientist. That’s not our job. That’s not our mission.”

These kinds of people must annoy administration enforcers. The nerve: government employees who take seriously their responsibilities as public servants, who see themselves as “acting in an official capacity on behalf of the people as a whole,” as the dictionary puts it. This defies the administration mantra that the agencies, departments and employees of government exist to serve not the people but the president.

After five years, the country is littered with honorable Bush discards:

• On Monday, Newsweek revealed details of a battle that raged behind the scenes at the Justice Department over Bush’s demand for more and more unchecked power. Among those who resisted on legal grounds were career government lawyers and such political appointees as assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith, who resigned in 2004, and deputy attorney general James Comey, who resigned last summer. Comey was also responsible for the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor on the CIA-leak case involving former agent Valerie Plame.

• Susan F. Wood resigned last summer as the top official at the FDA in charge of women’s health after Bush political appointees repeatedly overruled career scientists and agency medical experts about the need for and safety of nonprescription emergency contraception.

• Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki retired early after cautioning that advance plans for invading Iraq didn’t include enough troops to secure the country afterward.

• Richard Clarke, the top career counterterrorism specialist at Bush’s National Security Council, was pushed into resigning after trying and failing to get the Bush administration to focus at the highest levels on the threat posed by al-Qaida — before 9/11.

• Greg Thielmann, a career senior expert in intelligence matters, retired after being barred from senior staff meetings by Bush State Department appointee John Bolton. Thielmann told The New Yorker that Bolton (now U.N. ambassador) tried to set up his own intelligence operations at State. Thielmann had raised red flags about dubious reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was ignored. He was right.

Bush’s systematic rejection of institutional expertise and loyalty to duty (rather than loyalty to him) might be less objectionable if his my-way-or-the-highway approach worked equally well or better. There is no evidence of it.

Indeed, his preference for hard-line hacks and sycophants has left the United States mired in chaos in Iraq with few viable alternatives, none of them particularly appealing. Most recently, reports released last week by a special inspector general for the Defense Department indicate that America is breaking its promises about Iraqi reconstruction because billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds and Iraqi oil revenues to pay for the work have been, in a word, stolen.

The administration’s disdain for career public servants also decimated the once respected Federal Emergency Management Agency, producing, in turn, the lethally inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina. After a briefing for House investigators last week, a White House official admitted to the New York Times that “There was a lack of situational awareness at all levels.” In English, I’m pretty sure that means “Nobody knew what was going on.” (NPR reported last week that resignations of FEMA career staffers continue.)

And Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan, hatched in deception in the middle of the night on the floor of Congress, turned into a nightmare upon launch in January.

Little wonder that there is little enthusiasm, on either side of the aisle, for Bush’s trust-me explanation for his assumption of unconstrained power in intelligence operations. Whatever reasonable expectation he had of getting the benefit of the doubt has long since been forfeited by his track record for duplicity and, at least as bad, by the lack of even a minimal level of competence.

From the Pentagon to the Department of Justice, from the Food and Drug Administration to NASA, good people have left careers in public service, and more are being driven out. The barbarians aren’t at the gate; they’re inside. And they’re in charge.