There is a new right-hand man in President Bush's corner with Joshua B. Bolten, the former White House director of the Office of Management and Budget, taking over for the resigning Andrew Card as the new White House chief of staff. Bush is wise to put new faces in Washington in hope of an administrative overhaul to spur a gain in public support. However, Bolten's political ideology does not appear to stray far from Card's, which will means this shake up will likely have little effect.
Just as the Reagan administration used a similar move to shake up the cabinet and brighten its image in the late '80s, it is high time that the Bush administration starts taking action to repair its own tattered reputation. There is no doubt that Card's replacement' who nearly reached the record for longest-standing White House chief of staff ' was a good place to start.
Bolten was a long-time Bush fan before being appointed to the budget office. Along with working on his campaign, he was a contributor to the No Child Left Behind Act in Bush's first term. Although the war in Iraq is partly to blame for the overwhelming national deficit, it does not bode well that Bolten was part of the budgeting apparatus during a time of ballooning national debt. If Bush's intent is to invigorate the White House staff, Bolten certainly is not the best candidate. Although a new face in this position, he has been with Bush from the beginning and will likely just serve as a cosmetic change.
Ultimately, the war in Iraq, the inadequate and slow response to Hurricane Katrina and a tremendous budgetary crisis are administrative mishaps that cannot be soon forgotten by the American public. But Bush cannot change his administration's tired image by simply appointing yet another yes man from his inner circle of Bush loyalists.
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... but not necessarily in with the new
