Bush: the cabinet of incuriosities

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - As President Bush remakes his administration for his second term, the most important member of his new cabinet may turn out to be the one he was unwilling - or unable -

to replace: Treasury Secretary John Snow. In some ways, Mr. Snow was the first selection of this new cabinet, just now settling into its full ensemble. Mr. Snow's prenuptial agreement,

when he replaced the obstreperous Paul O'Neill two years ago, is similar to the ones his newly arrived (or at least newly promoted) second-term colleagues have just signed: all

policies come from the White House. Read the script with ardor and good cheer. As Mr. Bush learned in his first term, this is a difficult agreement for some of America's most

accomplished people to sign. They may be publicly hailed for their innovation and decisiveness, but those qualities are rarely demanded in their cabinet jobs. Consequently, cabinet members

often feel like imposters. This president's mission is to tame the unwieldy federal bureaucracy, not empower it. One way he has done this is to weaken cabinet members themselves, often

by allowing them to announce policies that he has then publicly repudiated - a tactic he used, for instance, with Secretary of State Colin Powell over administration policy toward North

Korea. Not surprisingly, many traditional high achievers end up frustrated. Recruitment of others has proved difficult. The result is the second-term cabinet: an odd collection of quiet

tacticians and loyal friends. This has significant implications in how the government is run - and the Treasury Department offers a glimpse of what other parts of the executive branch are

fast becoming. Just as a White House is defined by its president, departments were often reflections of their secretaries. Over the past two years, Treasury - like state under Mr. Powell -

has become a neutered giant, looking for direction from an often distracted or otherwise engaged White House. Meanwhile, the policy arms of entire parts of the government have been withering

as career staffers leave for jobs where they can at least use their expertise and training. Mr. Bush's style of top-down management means that cabinet departments are no longer

reflections of their secretaries but of the president himself - or, more precisely, his will. It's a system that many corporate chief executives would envy (or certainly did in the

1970's, when Mr. Bush was at Harvard Business School), and it just may be Mr. Bush's most significant legacy. Yet such an arrangement creates its own set of problems, especially in

the public sector. Mr. Snow, for example, after two years traveling the nation and world promoting the president's policies, was suddenly seen as inadequate in the post-election glow.

The centerpieces of the president's second term - Social Security reform and an overhaul of the tax code - would both require the support of a cabinet secretary who was more than a mere

mouthpiece. Mr. Snow, though he is a former chief executive and has a doctorate in economics, was not considered to be up to the task of guiding two of the most ambitious domestic policy

proposals in decades through Congress and Wall Street. Unattributed quotations to this effect began to leak from the White House, and names of possible replacements made headlines. Mr. Snow

was cast adrift, rescued only when some of the more prominent names let it be known they were not interested in his job. The unspoken concern at the center of this episode: maybe loyalty is

not enough. Maybe the president needs to vest his authority in someone who can actually help sail the ship of state on these two initiatives, someone with autonomous and irrefutable

credibility in areas where the president - electoral mandates notwithstanding - could use a boost. The president, affirming Mr. Snow, has decided otherwise. Power, as Mr. Bush sees it,

justifies itself. No boost required. It is undercut, in fact, by even a reasonable expression of need. Or by probing questions. The president chose Bernard Kerik to lead the Department of

Homeland Security because he was "a good man," an intangible, gut-check standard that the president also applies to judicial nominees and world leaders. When it emerged that Mr.

Kerik's nomination was doomed, he withdrew to spare Mr. Bush further embarrassment. He thus proved that he possessed the very qualities of personal loyalty (if not necessarily honesty)

that recommended him to the president in the first place. Whatever the roots of Mr. Bush's overriding devotion to loyalty, it partly stems from his disdain for the concerns of old-style

meritocrats, the kind of people who wince when the president places his confidence in someone like Mr. Kerik. Mr. Bush has never been comfortable in America's so-called meritocracy.

Undistinguished in college, business school and in the private sector, he spent nearly 30 years sitting in seminar rooms and corporate suites while experts and high achievers held forth. Now

it appears that he's having his revenge - speaking loudly in his wave of second-term cabinet nominations for a kind of anti-meritocracy: the idea that anyone, properly encouraged and

supported, can do a thoroughly adequate job, even better than adequate, in almost any endeavor. It's an empowering, populist idea - especially for those who, for whatever reason, have

felt wrongly excluded or disrespected - that is embodied in the story of Mr. Bush himself: a man with virtually no experience in foreign affairs or national domestic policy who has been a

uniquely forceful innovator in both realms. History will judge whether his actions are visionary or reckless. In the meantime, he is applying his intensely personal method for judging merit

to pick a group of largely no-name cabinet officials for his triumphal second term. This is not to disparage any of the president's selections. They are uniformly men and women of sound

credential and solid achievement. But even well-known cabinet appointees like Condoleezza Rice, a respected but inexperienced national security adviser, and Alberto Gonzales, a reverential

and competent White House lawyer, have few credentials more important than the trust and confidence of Mr. Bush. Mr. Snow, though undistinguished in leading a shrunken Treasury Department,

will now shepherd Social Security and tax reform as the president's top domestic appointee. Michael Leavitt, the current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is already

vetted and shifts easily to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Margaret Spellings, the president's longtime Texas confidant, moves to the Department of Education despite

often being overwhelmed as head of the Domestic Policy Council. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - a surviving first-term heavyweight, who may have worked too hard telling Mr. Bush

what he wanted to hear - is increasingly left with only the president's trust and confidence as thin armor. Now that Mr. Bush has won his final campaign and holds high a gleaming

national mandate, he can be ever more himself. And for Mr. Bush, personality is destiny. What you do is not as important as whether you are deemed morally sound and trustworthy. In other

words, a "good" man - or woman - beats a leading expert every time. Welcome to the new meritocracy. _Ron Suskind is the author of "The Price of Loyalty."_