Yesterday we flagged a Washington Post report about the “burrowing” of Bush administration political appointees into career jobs at various departments — most prominently Interior — where it will be difficult for the incoming Obama administration to dislodge them.
Bush certainly didn’t invent what’s sometimes called the “headless nail” phenomenon, but he’s taking a bit of heat for the news nonetheless. Yesterday, reports the Post in a followup, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein wrote in a letter to the White House:
Today’s report reveals that senior members of your administration are undermining your public commitment to ease the transition by reorganizing agencies at the eleventh hour and installing political appointees in key positions for which they may not be qualified,” they wrote. “We respectfully urge you to stand by your public commitment to a smooth transition by directing executive agencies immediately to halt any conversions of political appointees to career positions.
And White House press secretary Dana Perino was forced to deny that there’s an orchestrated effort to embed loyalists in the bureaucracy.
But there’s evidence that the burrowing under Bush has been extensive, and hasn’t just been confined to the administration’s waning days. The Post adds:
The Government Accountability Office has long tracked such political-to-career conversions, and it reported in May 2006 that during the first four years of the Bush administration, 144 political appointments were converted to career positions. Thirty-six were at the Health and Human Services Department, 23 were at the Justice Department, 21 were at the Defense Department and 15 were at the Treasury Department.
It’d be nice to know just which Bushies have already embedded themselves in those departments. We’ll see what we can find out…