How the Bush Administration got this way.

The reason I watch Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO is because, along with frank political discussion from people on different sides, you learn tidbits like this:

There are 150 Bush administration appointees that attended Regent School of Law. 

Never heard of it, you say?  Maybe it's because Regent is Pat Robertson's law school.  The one he founded.  And it's a Tier 4 school - which is the lowest ranking U.S News & World Report can give.  ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY Bush administration appointees went there...including several very influential people. 

I'll let Bill tell you about one of them in his own words:

"Which is fine, except that whenever there's a Bush Administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, where are they getting these screw-ups from? Well, now we know. From Pat Robertson. I'm not kidding.

Take Monica Goodling, who, before she resigned last week, because she's smack in the middle of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She's 33 years old. And though she never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 93 U.S. Attorneys.

How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College. You know, Messiah, home of the Fighting Christ-ies? And then went on to attend Pat Robertson's law school. Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said that the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor, has a law school.

And what kid wouldn't want to attend? It's three years, and you only have to read one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a Tier Four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It's not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook.

This is for people who couldn't get into the University of Phoenix.

Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist's diploma mill work in the Bush Administration? 150. And you wonder why things are so messed up. We're talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college funded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U.? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House?

In 200 years, we've gone from "We, the people," to "Up With People." From "the best and the brightest" to "dumb and dumber." And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school?

The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by "elites." It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And, by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling just hired to keep her a$$ out of jail, went to a real law school."

In this monologue, Bill hits upon the real reason the Bush Administration has reached levels of incompetence not encountered since Nixon (or perhaps even Taft).  He's literally hiring idiots...and then those idiots hire more idiots.  I remember talking to several conservatives, both before and after the 2004 election, who said that Bush was dong "a good job" and that the bad things that happened with Iraq and other areas were "not his fault".   Some even told me how religion was one of the reasons why they supported him.

Really?  Here's the truth: hiring good people and then replacing them with idiots is Bush's fault.  This is how Mike Brown of FEMA and Monica Goodling got their jobs that they obviously didn't deserve.  This is how Hurricane Katrina became such a giant clusterfuck.  This is why good people like Colin Powell get humiliated - and then leave, only to be replaced by halflings like Condoleeza Rice (who couldn't even carry Powell's jock strap).  This is how Harriet Miers was nominated to be a Supreme Court justice.  This is why Iraq is in such bad shape: only now has Bush started to appoint qualified people again, and it's basically been out of desperation.  This is why our VA care facilities like Walter Reed are in shambles.

There's nothing Christian about incompetence.  Bush's second-term debacle underscores the reason why the Founding Fathers chose to separate church and state.  If you support a candidate for political office based chiefly on his supposedly-shared religious beliefs, plenty of current events suggest that you are making a gigantic mistake at best -- and actually doing your fellow citizens a massive disservice at worst.  Just because a person, place or school has a religious affiliation doesn't make it good.

It's pretty clear now why so many of Bush's first-term appointees and cabinet members stepped down when Bush was re-elected, or within several months afterward.  They didn't want to be rats on a sinking ship.

I've had more conservative friends tell me that Bill Clinton disgraced the Oval Office because he got a blow job in it, and then lied about it in front of a grand jury.  Never mind the fact that we assume, rather than knowing, exactly where he got his blow job.  Never mind that lying to a grand jury about a blow job from an intern in and of itself is probably one of the milder sketchy things a president has ever done while in office. 

My question is this: if Bill Clinton disgraced the presidency with his behavior and lies, what has George W. Bush done with his behavior and lies?   Aside from certain aspects of the Patriot Act, very little that Bush is done is actually illegal.  But almost all of his actions since 9/11 have been, for wont of a better word, sketchy.  Even if you were to put his other alleged transgressions aside (which is asking a lot, I know), I'd say that undermining the country by appointing idiots to important positions, at the cost of thousands of American lives, is far more damaging to the country - and the the credibility and integrity of the presidency.

One hundred and fifty appointees from Pat Robertson's law school.  Wow.  We can only hope the next president treats his position with far more reverence and respect than this one does.

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