According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 54 percent of Americans think President Bush values party loyalty and personal friendship over competence. The poll was prompted, as if you didn’t know, by Bush’s habit of appointing friends and retainers to major jobs in his administration. Some of these seem qualified enough: Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzales. Others seem more questionable, none more so than Michael Brown and Harriet Miers. In one sense this is nothing new for Bush. From the start, his administration was marked by a web of family connections, and certain members of the press were quick to cry...
