Seriously, are they thinking of our President Bush?
Minor scandal playing out over at the World Bank involving Paul Wolfowitz (the whole thing is somewhat ironic given that cleaning up corruption was his big thing going in, but anywho). Latest twist is that the board of direcectors is going to get tough on Wolfie and send in a vote of "no confidence." Why not just fire him? Well, being foreigners (loooved both "Four" and "Records" classic, classic rock) they lack, well, guts. Rather than fire him, they decided to go with "no confidence" because,
Board members are betting that a strong expression of dissatisfaction will persuade the Bush administration to withdraw its support and urge Wolfowitz to step down.I'm sorry, are they new to the party? Are they really thinking that Bush will bow to their cute little "no confidence" vote and withdraw support for Mr Wolfowitz? Where have they been for the last six years? I know it shouldn't, but that line of reasoning just insults me. W is a man who won't take urging from the US SENATE on his AG, even when members of his own party have "no confidence" in his man. Do they really, honestly think that W cares at all about their "confidence" in Mr Wolfowitz? They will pass the "no confidence" measure, and W will assume that the whole mess has blown over. Mr Wolfowitz did something wrong, the Board handled it with their cute little measure, and all's well.
I honestly don't care either way. But at this point, I'm rooting for the two W's. If the Board can't summon the courage to fire a boss they have "no confidence" in, and if they're homework is really so bad that they think that that vote will force W's hand, then, well, they deserve to be frustrated. That's what happens when you lack courage and are incompetent.
The good news for Stalin is that this action only builds on his argument that global institutions are completely incapable of dealing with any kind of crisis.
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1 comment:
THe real reason the Board isn't going to fire him is that ultimately they do not have anything on him. The head of the Board is using very careful language to describe what he did and di not approve and even the April 28th NY Times editorial calling for Wolfowitz to step down focsuses on how disliked he is and the "perception" that he cannot effectively fight corruption. I am not going to defend much of thr behavor of international institutions but some of this is blow back for a criminally incompotent administration who has tried to run the world over with its ideas. The odd thing is that ideas have been pretty good but it seems like at the root of most Bush screw ups is high level hacks replacing compentent beaurocrats with party loyalists. From Homeland Security to FEMA to the AG's office, this White House doesn't seem to take the mechanics of governing very seriously which wouldn't be the end of the world until lets say you deicde to blow up the Middle East. Again, not a bad idea but requires good execution. Wolfowitz had a great and ambitious agenda for the Bank but his high level team of former administration officals and his dismissiveness of the people who run the Bank doomed the mission. Same thing that happened with Bolton at the UN.
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