The New Republic on Bush Cronyism

With the selection of Harriet Miers to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the latest issue of The New Republic looks to The Federalist Papers for guidance (which I generally support in whatever forum it may be found), while making a very cogent point in its critique:

In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton warned that, in presenting nominations to the Senate, a president "would be both ashamed and afraid" to nominate cronies -- or as Hamilton called them "obsequious instruments of his pleasure." Maybe politics was different back in the 1780s, but we have watched Bush appoint many obsequious instruments of his pleasure. It may be his legacy: George W. Bush -- he took the shame and fear out of cronyism.

The Miers nomination also laid bare the elitism of the Beltway class; apparently Southern Methodist University, also the alma mater of the First Lady, does not pass muster.

In Richard Ben Cramer's brilliant What It Takes: The Road to the White House, Joe Biden -- longtime Delaware Senator and sometime presidential candidate -- proclaimed, "There is a river of power that runs through this country, and the source of that river is the Ivy League."

Biden is correct. And that's precisely the problem writ large. For those schooled in the Ivy League, the world is little more than an extended public policy simulation. Everyone simply lives in the game that they've programmed.