By Robert Reich:

The White House's strategy to make John Roberts the next chief justice
has been the very model of meticulous planning, by contrast to its
utter clueless-ness in dealing with Katrina. No White House in modern
history has been as adept at politics and as ham-fisted at governing.
Why?

With politics, the Bush administration has shown remarkable discipline
-- squelching leaks and keeping Cabinet members on message, reaching
down into the bureaucracy to bend analyses in directions that supports
what it wants to do, imposing its will on congressional leaders and
even making a political imprint on state legislatures. No recent
president has got re-elected with controlling majorities in both houses
of Congress, or been as successful in repositioning the national debate
around his ideological view of the world.

With governing, it's been almost criminally incompetent -- failing to
act on clear predictions of a terrorist attack like 9/11 or a natural
disaster like Katrina, botching intelligence over Saddam Hussein's
supposed weapons of mass destruction, failing to secure order after
invading Iraq, allowing prisoners of war to be tortured, losing
complete control over the federal budget, creating a bizarre Medicare
drug benefit from which the elderly are now fleeing, barely responding
to the wave of corporate lootings and running the Federal Emergency
Management Agency into the ground. Not since the hapless administration
of Warren G. Harding has there been one as stunningly inept as this
one.

The easy answer to the paradox is that Bush cares about winning
elections and putting his ideological stamp on the nation, but doesn't
give a hoot about governing the place. But that's no explanation
because the two are so obviously connected. An administration can't
impose a lasting stamp without being managed well, and a president's
party can't keep winning elections if the public thinks it's composed
of bumbling idiots.

The real answer is that the same discipline and organization that's
made the White House into a hugely effective political machine has
hobbled its capacity to govern. Blocking data from lower-level
political appointees and civil servants that's inconsistent with what
it wants to do or sheds doubt on its wisdom, for example, may be
effective politics, in the short term. It keeps the media and the
opposition party at bay.

But the same squelching of troublesome information prevents top policy
makers from ever getting the data they need. Operatives in the CIA
suspected Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction and personnel
at the Department of State knew the plan to invade Iraq was seriously
flawed, but such judgments were suppressed by a White House that made
perfectly clear what it wanted and didn't want to hear. Career
professionals at the CIA and the Department of State are now wary of
sharing what they know with appointed officials, as are scientists and
experts all over the federal government.

Similarly, a White House whose Cabinet officers all deliver the same,
positive lines can be a formidable message machine. But this same
discipline also discourages internal dissent, for the simple reason
that in Washington nothing stays completely private. The predictable
result is that Bush officials have become yes-men incapable of sounding
alarms. The price of dissent is high. Soon after Glenn Hubbard, then
chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, warned that the cost of
the Iraqi war would be in the range of $200 billion -- almost exactly
what it's cost so far -- he was fired. After Paul O'Neill, his
Secretary of the Treasury, worried out loud that federal budget
deficits didn't seem to matter any longer -- a prescient concern -- he
was fired, too. Can it be any wonder why this president doesn't seem to
get it?

Political discipline is also honed when the White House staffs agencies
with people loyal to the president, along with loyalists' friends. Joe
Allbaugh worked as W's chief of staff when he was Texas governor and
his 2000 campaign manager, so it seemed perfectly natural to put
Allbaugh's college buddy, Michael Brown, in charge of FEMA even though
"Brownie" had no previous experience in disaster management. FEMA's
acting deputy director and its acting deputy chief of staff had no
relevant experience, either; both had been advance men in the White
House. Given this, no one should be surprised that FEMA so badly
bungled Katrina. Brownie is gone now, but the administration is still
crawling with cronies who know their politics, but don't have a clue
what they're supposed to manage.

Politics first, competence last: That's the Bush administration all
over. Karl Rove, Bush's brain and deputy chief of staff, is in charge
of the political juggernaut that's substituted for effective
governance. Presumably, he's now at work on a plan to burnish the image
of Republicans as managers of the public's business so they don't the
hell beaten out of them in the mid-terms a year from now. But the
harder Rove works at spinning what this White House has accomplished,
the more likely it is that Americans will see that what it's
accomplished is basically spin.