Katrina lessons learned?
If true, well... One of my lessons learned from 2005 is that we need to spend more time fleshing out information about political appointments. Take the case of David Safavian, who served for a short period as administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. He had no real procurement experience, when all was said and done. Was that important? Perhaps not, but I'm not sure we spent enough time before so we at least knew what we were getting into.As always, we'll try to do better in the future.
I have no knowledge of this myself and have done no reporting, so I'm just passing along what I read, but... this item from Slate.com's Today's Papers this morning:
The Post goes inside with President Bush bypassing the Senate and making a raft of recess appointments last night. Among the fine new hires: Julie Myers who will become head of the immigration bureau, despite complaints across the political spectrum that she's unqualified. Another hire will head a preparedness office at the Department of Homeland Security after making a name for herself, as the Post puts it, "demanding that information about racial disparities in police treatment of blacks in traffic cases be deleted from a news release." And a third will head the State Department's office to coordinate emergency relief. She has no experience in emergency management or relief, but, don't fret, she did serve as a state chair of Bush's 2000 campaign.
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