First qualification for a job in the Bush inner circle:
Being a total dick.
WASHINGTON - Bill Clinton is a "virtuoso deceiver" and Hillary Rodham Clinton a "true chameleon" guilty of "self-serving behavior, comparative radicalism, and dubious personal morality."
Al Gore is a "mad dog" known to "foam at the mouth." John McCain is given to "showboating." And Jacques Chirac, Nelson Mandela, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all "feckless fools."
Says who? President Bush's new chief domestic policy adviser. (Washington Post.)
Oh and he (hearts) beating kids:
As Zinsmeister sees it, racial profiling by the police makes sense; the military, if anything, treats terrorist suspects too gently; and casual sex has led to wrecked cities, violence and "endless human misery." In a "soft, often amoral, and self-indulgent age," he warned, some children "will be ruined without a whip hand," and he assured that "things generally go better with God."
(I'm going to sell God brand margerine spread under the "things go better with God" slogan.)
And this is why I hate the press; the obligatory fairandbalanced pander:
A review of years of articles reveals a formidable thinker with a powerful sense of what he considers right and wrong.
How does anything in this article support the claim of a "formidable thinker?" In fact, he seems utterly fucking unqualified:
With scant experience in government or campaigns, Zinsmeister seemed an unlikely choice for White House domestic policy chief. Until his appointment, he was little known in Washington. At 6-foot-5, he would have stood out in the capital, but he edited the American Enterprise magazine from Cazenovia in upstate New York.
Oh and he has a way with post-facto editing to cover his own ass:
In a 2004 profile by the Syracuse New Times, Zinsmeister was quoted as saying, "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings." But the New York Sun discovered last month that he doctored that and other quotes when he posted the profile on the AEI Web site. The edited quote said, "I learned in Washington that there is an 'overclass' in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that's just as morally repugnant as our 'underclass.'
What a fucking revalation--there's BAD rich people!! (He must only mean those J-O-O Jews.) Plus his buddies helped pad his resume:
The White House release said he "founded" the American Enterprise, although the magazine had been around for four years when he took over in 1994. The White House took the blame, saying that Zinsmeister actually used the term "formulated" because he revamped the magazine but that a White House aide misunderstood and wrote "founded."
Sorta like how FDR "founded" America. But at least he's shown an impressive record for prognostication of world affairs:
"The War is Over, and We Won," announced a June 2005 piece. "With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over," he wrote. Although there will still be "egregious acts of terror," he said, "contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq."
Um,....oops.
He also thinks the media is a buncha wimps.
Media coverage of the war has been a favorite target. He called journalists who embedded in 2003 "whiny and appallingly soft"
(Lara Logan, my dear celebrity media crush, takes his ilk behind the woodshed here: http://www.crooksandliars.com/... )
This is a man who described President Clinton as "a chronic liar, an out-of-control adulterer, an obstructer of justice, a draft dodger, an all-round morally challenged sleazeball."
Try and imagine the uproar if President Edwards chose a policy advisor in 2009 who said the same thing about Bush on the record. "Sleazeball?" "Chronic liar?" Of course you can't. The social guardians of the punditocracy would take a 2-minute time-out from their Georgetown dinnerparty circle-jerk to administer a cooperative beatdown of every Democrat since Al Smith.
This is sick. Nelson Mandela is a "feckless fool?" (I ought not be surprised, considering the apartheid record of the VP...) The appointment of a certifiable sociopath of such magnitude should be the last necessary sign to the American people that this administration simply feels no obligation to them...
...but then I've said that before, and the sheep still graze on talk radio.