William Fisher

NEW YORK, Nov 23 2005 (IPS) — Critics of the George W. Bush administration are charging that recent appointments suggest that the president has failed to learn from the Katrina disaster and the Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court, and continues to favour political loyalty over qualifications and competence.

In a letter published by the Washington Post Wednesday, Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii complained that, “It has become clear that many senior leadership positions in the federal government are being given to underqualified candidates.”

Last week, Akaka, a senior member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced a bill that would establish mandatory criteria for senior leadership positions in the Homeland Security department.

One former government official, now a public policy professor, spoke to IPS of Bush appointments in general on condition of anonymity.

“First, the president is getting bad advice. Second, when he gets comfortable with people and comes to trust them, it’s almost impossible to get him to change his mind,” he said.

Criticism has focused on three appointments in particular – Paul Bonicelli to oversee the democracy and governance programmes of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Ellen Sauerbrey to head the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and Julie Myers to head U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

During Hurricane Katrina, the administration was sharply criticised for the dysfunctional response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and its director, Michael Brown.

Brown, a Republican political operative with no prior experience with natural disasters, was ordered to leave New Orleans and return to Washington by Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff after FEMA failed to deliver help to thousands of people stranded on rooftops or in shelters. He resigned soon afterwards.

And when White House Counsel Harriet Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court, the president hailed her as the person “most qualified” for that lifetime appointment. But senators and special interest groups – including some from Bush’s own conservative religious base – drew attention to her lack of experience with constitutional law, and the nomination was withdrawn.

Administration critics are drawing parallels with recent appointees, saying they lack the experience needed to do their jobs.

Paul Bonicelli has been appointed to oversee the democracy and governance programmes of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Those programmes are mandated to play a central role in Bush’s efforts to democratise Iraq and the broader Middle East.

Bonicelli is dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College (PHC) in Purcellville, Virginia, whose motto is: “For Christ and Liberty”. This ultra-fundamentalist institution requires its students and faculty to sign a “statement of faith” declaring that they believe “Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh”, “Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead”, and Hell is a place where “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity”.

Critics question how Muslims will react to the view that “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity”.

Bonicelli and PHC have had close ties to the Bush administration and to private right-wing religious groups who form such an important part of Bush’s base. PHC students have been chosen to serve as interns for Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and for the White House Office of Public Liaison, and students and faculty are frequently invited to White House and inaugural events.

In 2002, Bush named Bonicelli, along with former Vatican advisor John Klink and Janice Crouse of the ultra-conservative Concerned Women for America, to a U.N. delegation to promote biblical values in U.S. foreign policy – and sparked an outcry of protest from women’s rights advocates.

Ellen Sauerbrey was nominated to head the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, whose mission is to coordinate U.S. response to migration problems arising from war and natural disasters, and to work with international groups on population and reproductive-health issues. The Bureau has a budget of more than 700 million dollars.

Sauerbrey ran Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign in Maryland, and twice ran for governor of that state. She also served as U.S. envoy on women’s issues at the United Nations, where she advocated Bush-administration positions on abortion, abstinence and reproductive health. Those policies have been widely criticised for frustrating family planning and failing to provide reproductive health services to refugee women.

Last month, a coalition of 10 women’s health and rights groups urged Bush to withdraw Sauerbrey’s nomination, calling it “yet another in a long string of crony nominations of unqualified individuals for critical positions”.

At her nomination hearing in the U.S. Senate, Democrats were outspoken in their opposition.

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California said she had “strong reservations” about placing her in charge of a nearly one-billion-dollar programme. Boxer suggested Sauerbrey was picked only because she is a Republican loyalist and thus could not handle her duties.

“I don’t think we see the requisite experience that we’ve seen in other nominees,” Boxer said.

Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland, whose staff played a key role in organising opposition to Sauerbrey, named previous holders of the post, noting that many had extensive expertise in refugee matters. “It’s really raising the question about the qualifications that you bring to handle this refugee issue,” he said.

Julie Myers, nominated to head U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security and the second largest federal investigative agency after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

ICE’s mission is to deal with all Customs and Immigration violations occurring within the U.S., including drug shipments over a U.S. border and the detention and deportation of all illegal aliens involved in removal proceedings. The agency runs the largest and most secretive prison system in the U.S. and accounts for close to 80 percent of all arrests made within the FBI’s joint terrorism task force. It prosecutes more individuals than any other federal agency.

Myers was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York for two years, and for the past four years held a variety of jobs at the White House and at other government departments. At the White House, she was a special assistant to the president for personnel issues.

She is also the niece of now retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

ICE is an extensive bureaucracy with tens of thousands of employees and an annual budget of close to 15 billion dollars. It has been widely criticised as one of the most dysfunctional. Myers has little experience in management or with immigration issues.

Matthew Issman, national legislative vice president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, characterised the Myers appointment this way: She “just doesn’t pass the smell test and is another indication that this administration created the Department of Homeland Security as window dressing and does not care whether ICE is successful”, he said.

“What we need is a strong, law-enforcement leader, not another inexperienced, well-connected lawyer with friends in the White House.”