Swept Under the Rug Monday: The Wyrm Eats Its Tail

Over the course of the Bush administration, there have been many famous cases of personnel management, such as the case of Valerie Plame. However, there has also been pretty severe staffing problems. Readers may remember, this Oct. 14th story in the New York Times about issues at the "Level I" level, but the problem goes much deeper than that. In the course of politicizing every political appointment in the federal bureaucracy, the Bush administration has pushed or otherwise drove highly qualified people from career positions in the various departments. From the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, to the State Department's Foreign Service Corps, from the Transportation Department's Transportation Security Officers (and the Homeland Security Department's Procurement staff), to Patent and Trademark Office's examination workforce, there is a common story of staffing problems. There is a recurrent question in recent times about whether the U.S. can survive the Bush administration, but I think the real question is whether the Bush administration can sustain itself in the one year, two months, and twenty two days that it can legally retain its authority.

In addition to driving down the unemployment rate in the greater Washington metropolitan area, this phenomenon has combined with another alarming trend in the Bush administration, that of over-classification (and more) and retroactive classification, a trend that supposedly found its origin in 9/11. Because of the volume of classified material and the resultant increase in demand for clearances, there is a backlog for security clearances that could force wait times to be most easily measured in months or years. If positions requiring security clearances are being filled by less than the best, it might explain why the Bush administration's approaches to sensitive intelligence work range from the illegal to the dysfunctional.

And the punch line is that the DHS can't properly comply with the Vacancies Reform Act.