Rewriting history.

So I'm out surfing the web on a Friday night and came across a web page on the whitehouse site expounding the examples of leadership by ol chimperor, except that the latest of both examples was from Feb 2002. Yes, that's right, both examples.

That was this tome (Careful there's some exposed Dick in there) in which the chimp performed for relatively high ranking civil servants dragging along dancing bear dick crash-cart himself and others in order to Set Goals And Expectations For His Appointees.

Gems like:
"One of the important things about having a good team is not only that the people need to be competent and strong, but the environ... there needs to be an environment in which people are willing to express their mind, willing to discuss issues in an open and candid way, that there can't be any kind of ridicule or... cynicism for somebody else's point of view. "

and
"The goal is to rout out terror wherever it may hide or exist in order to defend freedom. I can't think of any more profound goal for an administration to pursue when we're successful as we will be, I can't tell you how long it's going to take, but when we're successful we will have left behind a legacy of freedom. After all that's the whole notion the country was founded on. And one reason we're doing so well is that the administration has a war counsel of people involved in setting the strategy have had freedom to express their opinions, say exactly what's on their mind and it brought vast amounts of experience to the table. "

or maybe even
"Now in order to be effective to challenge the status quo you've got to recognize what works and accept what works and encourage what works. If you find something not working, blow the whistle on it. Demand something different, you cannot achieve long lasting reform or big goals in our government if you're just there to accept what's not working."

or how about
"He's gonna give me a report and I'm gonna watch to see whether progress can be made toward goals. So we're gonna lead, we're gonna achieve results and we're gonna do one other thing. We're gonna make Americans proud of what they see. There's only one standard in this government, and that's the highest possible ethical standards. There are no corners to be cut. There are no excuses to be made when it comes to setting an example for our fellow Americans."

But this:
"We were talking about the Vice Presidency. I said you know if times are good you're probably not gonna be needed much. But if we ever have a problem you're gonna have a huge role to play. If we ever have something like a recession or an emergency or a war I'm gonna count on you. Thank God he's the Vice President."

Gosh-Darn it, just seems almost prescient.

Pop a top and kick back with "Andy Card Discusses Ethics in Government" over on the tools for success tab. It's only like 5 paragraphs with this cherry:

"But even beyond that, recognize that working on this administration means that you should have the courage to follow the rules, obviously, and stay within the law, obviously. But it's actually to do more than that. Recognize that you do have a moral compass that tells you what to do and to do the right thing, and we'd like to see everyone do the right thing."

While you're on that tab scroll all the way down to the hands photo gallery at the bottom. I think it's a particularly nice touch, especially: Captioned "President Bush delivers his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol January 29, 2002.

White House photo by Paul Morse"

Irrelevant, but, nice. The 'working hands' motif. That's a prime example of the kind of nuance that real international leadership should exhibit.

I feel so much better about our country now! To know that these astute ethicists have treated the rank and file Civil Servants with all due respect for their opinions. We only have to look at the manifold examples of morality extant in this administration. Consider for a moment the vast number of corrupt officials indicted after Sibel Edmunds testified to that grand jury. How much safer we are since the attempt to dismantle our monitoring capabilities of black market WMD sales was thwarted. That Officers meerely suggesting torture were summarily dismissed for Conduct Unbecoming.

Oh, what? Sorry, never-mind.

-Hoot