At least not a director who has anything remotely resembling the role envisaged by the 9/11 Commission. In suggesting that he is following the commission's recommendation, the president is conveying a familiar lack of candor. Josh Marshall discusses some of the key differences between what the commission called for and and what the president is proposing here. That the president doesn't give this would-be figurehead budgetary authority tells you all you need to know. In a Bush II administration this job would be close to meaningless, no matter who occupies the position. Intelligence would still largely be run out of the Defense Department in the next Bush term, and since the civilian leadership of the DOD has done such a bang-up job in the current Bush administration, one presumes we would see more of the same for another 4 years. (Un)lucky us.
But really Marshall's brief post doesn't even capture the sham that the president's proposal is. If you go back and read all of the commission's report it's clear that they want a director with exceedingly broad powers that will have an ability to reach down into a broad swath of federal agencies. I'm not sure that level of bureacratic overhaul is required. But in any event Bush's ersatz director is a different animal altogether. And I don't see that adding such a toothless functionary would do much of anything to really fix the problems in the intelligence structure that the 9/11 Commission illustrated in great detail. Posted by armand at August 3, 2004 02:56 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics