Letter from Washington

Here’s a story they tell in Washington. It seems that Lyn Nofziger, Ronald Reagan’s first White House political director, was exercised with his candidate’s transition team after the 1980 election: it was rejecting a Reagan loyalist as not qualified for a job he wanted. “Incompetents have run the United States Government for two hundred years,” Nofziger shouted exasperatedly. “It’s our incompetents’ turn. We won this election.”

Now it’s time for Bush’s incompetents to run the country—well, we’ll hope not incompetents, but you get the idea. As you read this column, the last big pieces of the Bush Administration should be falling into place. The Cabinet secretaries and their assistants and their assistants’ assistants will, for the most part, have been selected.

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Here’s a story they tell in Washington. It seems that Lyn Nofziger, Ronald Reagan’s first White House political director, was exercised with his candidate’s transition team after the 1980 election: it was rejecting a Reagan loyalist as not qualified for a job he wanted. “Incompetents have run the United States Government for two hundred years,” Nofziger shouted exasperatedly. “It’s our incompetents’ turn. We won this election.”

Now it’s time for Bush’s incompetents to run the country—well, we’ll hope not incompetents, but you get the idea. As you read this column, the last big pieces of the Bush Administration should be falling into place. The Cabinet secretaries and their assistants and their assistants’ assistants will, for the most part, have been selected.