I Can Call You Crony And Crony When You Call Me, You Can Call Me W.

We have been known to stumble around, fueled by booze, shady parts of town late at night, popping into local establishments, having hallucinations epiphanies about altruism and a perfect society where everyone is treated equally and fairly and people are rewarded for their hard work and good deeds. Then we usually fall off a barstool, bang our heads on the ground and wake up on a friend's couch hours later. Something similar happened to W's new Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, apparently. Except replace "fueled by booze" with "fueled by self-righteous moral certitude born of the white man's burden" and "friend's couch" with "the White House."

With Andrew Card jumping off the sinking Bush ship, the president did a comprehensive search grabbed the closest member of his inner circle to pass by the Oval Office and put him in the position that Card held for almost as long a period as any Presidential Chief of Staff in history. Some on the right tried to spin this as Bush shaking things up and taking more control of the reins, but, if anything, as Howard Fineman (Newsweek, MSNBC) reports, Bush's move only worked to make his extremely tight-knit inner circle dwellers even tighter. The ol' rich kid in high school using his charisma and charm to make the nerd feel like he is part of the inner circle in order to help him cheat on his exams. Except replace "high school rich kid" with "rich son of a former president" and "nerd" with "policy wonk." And replace "cheat on exams" with "act like he knows what the fuck he is doing as president when the only thing he ever really wanted to do was be commissioner of baseball."

Of course, cronyism is standard operating procedure in politics, but as Fineman points out, Bush seems to practice it to a fault. All of this talk aside, we found the most interesting/ludicrous part of the story to be about the genesis of Bolten's rise to the West Wing.

It was a late-night walk through the street of Austin, Texas, that secured the job (domestic policy adviser or the guy who reads papers and books for the president.) The night before his job interview, Bolten had dinner, and then, to get some air and his bearings, had gone out for a stroll -– and eventually found himself (as is easy to do in Austin) in a rough part of town. He ended up having coffee at a diner with down-on-their-luck types, listening to their stories and encouraged them to try to get their personal acts together. Bolten recounted his itinerary the next day to Bush, who was charmed by the Victorian earnestness -– and innocence -– of the story. Now here, Bush evidently thought, was the guy to devise the mechanics of the “compassionate conservative” principles around which he and Rove were building the campaign.

Bolten at that moment became a Made Man in the Bush Family, and has been one ever since. Ironically (Bush’s critics would say, not surprisingly), as Budget Director Bolten has presided over the production of some of the biggest federal deficits in history, and Bush has tried to put the clamps on social-welfare spending in ways that most Democrats find less than compassionate.

That is some good stuff. Too bad Mr. Bolten's midnight epiphany in the rough part of Austin did not actually lead to him helping shape any positive or compassionate domestic policies. Hey, it's hard being thoughtful all the time. At least he tried. I'm sure those down-on-their-luck chaps Bolten talked to that night appreciate having sat through his self-righteous cheerleading only to see Bolten kowtow to the Right. Good anecdote, Mr. Fineman, but while we're here: you split time between Washington D.C. and New York and you consider Austin rife with 'rough parts of town?' That's rich. We are skeptical at best. Did the guy wander into the SoCo Magnolia Cafe and confuse rich emo kids buying migas with their trust fund money for down-on-their-luck types? His story just rings false to us. But a compassionate conservative wouldn't lie. Would he?