Blair & Bush - Delete as Applicable

There’s an excellent piece in today’s LA Times entitled Who's watching the president?

Amongst other things it asks

What happens to a large institution when all mechanisms of accountability are disabled.

He combines a distaste for details with a tendency to prize loyalty over performance.

Bush typically worries more about signaling resolve to his critics by denying failures inside his government than demanding excellence by punishing it.

Key House and Senate committees sometimes went months without oversight hearings on Iraq. Neither chamber managed more than a glancing review of the increased police powers the administration acquired for the war on terror.

Congress barely noted the collapse in care for many veterans

By refusing to challenge the administration's performance, the Republican majority allowed problems to fester and dysfunction to deepen.

Many of the decisions now causing Bush grief could have been made only by a politician who did not believe anyone was looking over his shoulder. It's inconceivable that the administration would have been so cavalier about planning the postwar occupation of Iraq — or so dismissive of the Army warnings that it had not deployed enough troops to ensure order .

Does that sound like anyone we know?