You've been laboring for eight long years in a federal agency as an appointee of George W. Bush. You want to leave on a high note. So what do you do?
Well, if you're one of 28 senior officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, you plan a trip to Mexico to tour the famous Mayan ruins and marvel at the Lacandon rain forest while conferring with counterparts in the Mexican government who will likely never talk to you again because your administration is sunsetting with the inauguration. On the list of those taking the trip: Director Dale Hall, who's leaving his job on Jan. 3, and Assistant Secretary Lyle Laverty, who's also departing just after the new president is sworn in.
According to the Washington Post's Al Kamen, the group will visit the Institute of Natural History and Ecology in Chiapas, enjoy receptions and dinner with local officials and have a few hours of meetings before flying back to Mexico. Some on the trip are planning to accept the two-day "optional extension" to see the Michoacan butterfly reserve with its profusion of Monarch butterflies, like the one in the photo above, who migrate every year from Canada.
We have nothing against nature, but we wonder about the wisdom of encouraging trips for officials who are leaving office. And what if the incoming administration has a question to ask of these officials?
Kamen asked Jamie Clark, who headed Fish and Wildlife during the Clinton administration, to look at the itinerary. Clark was not amused, saying:
This is a goodbye boondoggle if I ever saw one. The entire leadership will be gone during the transition.
If you thought members of Congress were the only ones taking last-minute trips at taxpayer expense just before they leave office, think again.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, who spent about $280,000 to take 11 staffers on a two-week tour of Australia last April, is capping his short tenure at the EPA with an all-expense trip to Israel and Jordan. As the Washington Post's wry columnist Al Kamen put it, Johnson is "winding up an excellent 10-day jaunt to the apparently environmentally troubled Holy Land."
Kamen reports that Johnson, "determined to continue gathering these elusive facts until the very end," attended the Eco-Cities of the Mediterranean Forum on the Dead Sea. A spokesman told the Post that Johnson "spoke with Jordanian leaders about the importance of international environmental cooperation at the Russeifah landfill in Russeifah, Jordan."
As if that were not enough, Johnson (seen above in Washington, D.C., recently unveiling the EPA's new hydrogen fuel cell cars) also met with Israeli officials, Kamen reported, "to promote sharing of information...on water security and water quality monitoring."
The tradition dates back to the Renaissance, when portraiture was a function of history, an attempt to document for posterity the greatness of great men.
And in the early days of the United States, the founders saw a political purpose in commissioning official portraits. George Washington sat for Gilbert Stuart. Defenders argue that a painting is still the most permanent archive of history.
But with the economy tanking, some are asking if we really need portraits of every Cabinet member and sub-Cabinet official to hang on an agency's walls. Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told the Washington Post that in this age of digital photography, agencies should consider using photos.
I think most people like the tradition of presidents having their portraits painted. But where does the line get drawn? Somewhere between the president to Cabinet agency to sub-Cabinet -- somewhere along the way, I'm pretty sure that you'd lose wide public support.
But the temptation to try for immortality must be great. When he first took office in 1977, President Jimmy Carter called portraits "unnecessary luxury" and ordered his Cabinet members to use photos instead. But his portrait hangs in the White House, as does Rosalyn Carter's.
Perhaps the quandary is best summed-up by an art historian, David Bjelajac. The George Washington University professor told the Post, "A photograph has an association with journalistic everyday life, whereas a painted image suggests something that transcends the moment."
So, as the Post's Christopher Lee found in a survey of the agencies, the Defense Department is awaiting delivery of former Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's portrait ($46,790). NASA paid $25,000 for a portrait of former administrator Daniel S. Goldin. And the Environmental Protection Agency forked over $29,500 for a portrait of outgoing Secretary Stephen L. Johnson. That's on top of the $19,000 that the National Cancer Institute paid for a portrait of former director Andrew C. von Eschenbach, now head of the Food and Drug Administration.
It was not a great surprise that retired four-star Gen. Colin Powell, the first secretary of State in George W. Bush's administration, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president today.
He had served in several Republican administrations — as a national security adviser in the Reagan White House, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush during the Gulf War. But after leaving government in 2004, Powell and his wife, Alma, formed America's Promise, an organization dedicated to helping children from all socioeconomic groups. So it was not unimaginable that he would prefer a candidate who advocates more spending for education, healthcare reform and tax cuts for the middle class, over his friend of 25 years, Republican John McCain.
And maybe it's not even a surprise that Powell, whose reputation was tarnished by his support for the war in Iraq with his vigorous claim to the United Nations that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, would embrace the antiwar Obama. On NBC's "Meet the Press," he even endorsed Obama's call for diplomatic outreach to countries like Iran and North Korea, saying:
We have managed to convey to the world that we are more unilateral than we really are. The new president is going to have to fix the reputation that we've left with the rest of the world ... and show that there is a new president, a new administration that is looking forward to working with our friends and allies. And in my judgment, also willing to talk to people who we have not been willing to talk to before. Because this is a time for outreach.
But it was a surprise — at least to our ears — to hear the 71-year-old Powell so roundly declare that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was not qualified to be president of the United States.
She's a very distinguished woman, and she's to be admired. But at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Sen. McCain made.
And it was also a surprise — and a refreshing one at that — to hear a leading American figure rise in defense of Muslim Americans against stereotypes about their patriotism.
For months, rumors have spread that Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan, was a Muslim. In fact, the Illinois senator is a Christian. But Powell is the first high-profile leader to raise a larger question, to wonder what would be disqualifying if Obama were a Muslim American.
Telling the story of a mother at the Arlington Cemetery graveside of her 20-year-old son, Kareem Rashad Sultan Kahn, who died for his country in Iraq, Powell said the "right response" to rumors that Obama is a Muslim is not only to deny them but to expose them as bigoted and un-American.
I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said, such things as, "Well, you that know Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
And now for something completely different: President Bush, yes, this President Bush--as a liberal.
The Canadian magazine Macleans is making that argument, under the shocking headline "The shockingly liberal legacy of George W. Bush."
The irony that it misses: Could it be that Vice President Dick Cheney is the force behind at least one element of the "liberalization?"
In a lengthy article that addresses the breadth of the Bush presidency and notes that the administration's legacy is more than just the war in Iraq, it says: "In some areas it is the result of hard-line conservative ideology — but in others it is surprisingly liberal."
Consider the seeming contradictions: The tax-cutting conservative who ...
From his post in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, F. Chase Hutto III has had his hands in a variety of issues.
There was the debate over clean air and global warming. By all accounts, he helped scuttle the course favored by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency for stronger regulations intended to fight emissions of greenhouse gases, as Countdown to Crawford reported a month ago.
There was the time the administration was considering greater restrictions on smog-forming ozone; he opposed them. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule to protect North Atlantic right whales? The Bush administration is reportedly about to scale it back. Hutto was in deep on that one, too.
His role was tracked by the Washington Post, which reports today that the administration has a new job in mind for him: He will be promoted, the Post reports, from his staff position in Cheney's office to assistant secretary of energy.
The result: One of the most ardent opponents of government regulation within the government would be put in a key decision-making position where global warming policies are set.
Said Jason K. Burnett, who as a deputy associate administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency tangled with Hutto over global warming until leaving the government: "I can't think of a case where Chase advocated more environmental or health protections."
As for placing Hutto in the Energy Department at this late date, the Post, quoting Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists, notes: "In coming months, Hutto could make policy decisions that the next administration would find difficult to reverse quickly."
President Bush is spending much of the next day en route to South Korea, his first stop on a trip that will take him to China by week's end.
Much as the trip has been built around the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Summer Olympic Games. But politics in general -- and human rights in particular -- threaten to overtake sports as the focus. And that opens up this question: Is this what Bush had in mind a year ago when he yielded to Chinese entreaties and promised Chinese President Hu Jintao that he would attend?
As the trip approached last week, the White House did little to calm the strong current of human rights issues running through the preparations.
The president met behind the scenes at the White House with five Chinese dissidents last week, earning a strong rebuke from the Chinese government. And, the Washington Post noted today, Bush's national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley met privately a day later with the heads of several major human rights organizations.
"My main message was that, much as the president would like the Olympics to be an apolitical sporting event, it won't be," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the Post in an e-mail message.
He continued:
Chinese people will seize the opportunity through peaceful protest to advance their own freedom agenda, the Chiense government will crack down, and President Bush will look awful if he ignores the repression around him and simply applauds the athletes.
Along comes Sen. John McCain, who also has some advice for the president he is seeking to replace: Don't be too "confrontational" with the Chinese hosts.
You don't want to go over there and insult the Chinese. It would not be good for our relations. I certainly don't think the president would or should go over there and be confrontational. At the same time I think the president can in a very diplomatic style make it clear what we stand for and believe in.
He's getting advice, too, from activists, some of whom are urging him to go beyond out-of-sight comments he might make to Chinese leaders and take a more visible step: Worship with underground Christians while in Beijing to remind Chinese officials that Americans value freedom of religion.
But the president has resisted efforts to make overt moves, vowing to separate politics from the Games. "I made a decision not to politicize the games," Bush said in an interview with Asian journalists last week. "This is for athletics."
With Congress rushing toward its summer recess -- and his own departure from Washington looming -- President Bush challenged House and Senate leaders (meaning, in this case, Democrats) once again to do what he knows they aren't about to do: open up the open waters for offshore oil and gas exploration.
He trooped his Cabinet into the sweltering Rose Garden this morning to reinforce his message that "the only thing now standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is the United States Congress."
Bush's target is a congressional ban on drilling -- which remains in effect apart from his lifting of an executive ban on such operations in the deep waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.
"The sooner Congress lifts the ban, the sooner we can get this oil from the ocean floor to your gas tank," he said -- making clear that his real audience was not the Congress, but Americans at the height of the summer vacation season contemplating the cost of car travel at $4 a gallon.
Working against the calendar, the president has made energy supplies and high prices a singular focus. Along with Congress, he is about to head out of town.
First, there is a long weekend at his family summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine -- where Walker's Point sits right on the Gulf of Maine and offers a fine vantage for watching the work of an oil rig, were one placed on the horizon. Then, after a visit to Asia built around the opening of the Beijing Olympics, he is planning to spend a few weeks at his own home in Crawford, Texas.
But longer range, of course, he is about to head out of town permanently. The energy situation is one of the few pressing matters that remain on his plate with even a remote chance of resolution.
It is common in Washington as an administration nears its end for officials at the federal agencies to try to push through often-controversial regulations. The idea is that whatever president follows, it may be a long time -- if at all -- before anyone gets around to taking a second look and manages to change them.
Environmental rules, health issues and workplace regulations are all common targets.
So along comes word that political appointees at the Department of Labor -- where Elaine L. Chao has been the secretary since the start of the Bush administration -- have their eyes on a plan that would make it more difficult to regulate on-the-job exposure of workers to chemicals and toxins.
That is a report in today's Washington Post, which said the senior officials are scrambling "with unusual speed" to get the rule in place.
The paper reports:
The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public notices of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May. Instead, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao's intention to push for the rule first surfaced on July 7, when the White House Office of Management and Budget posted on its Web site that it was reviewing the proposal, identified only by its nine-word title.
The text of the actual rule is not yet public, the Post reports, but the paper said the change would allow for the reexamination of how the risk of exposure to workplace toxins is measured -- taking up "long-standing complaints from businesses that the government overestimates the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals."
It is supposed to provide health services to about 2 million American Indians and Alaskan natives. But the Government Accountability Office charged Monday that the Indian Health Services, which often runs out of funds to pay for health care, managed to lose more than 5,000 pieces of equipment worth about $16 million in the period from 2004 to 2007.
Think $700,000 worth of IT equipment ruined by "bat dung" while in a storage room. A computer stolen from a New Mexico hospital -- and this was a desktop! -- containing 800 Social Security numbers and sensitive health information about Indians working in the uranium mines. To top it off, auditors found false purchasing documents created to mislead investigators.
The GAO blames mismanagement at the agency,
"IHS management has failed to establish a strong 'tone at the top,' allowing property management problems to continue for more than a decade with little or no improvement or accountability for lost and stolen property and compromise of sensitive personal data."
Officials at the agency disputed the findings, saying some items were later recovered and others were outdated anyway.
North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, promised hearings next week. "It's disgusting what's happening at the Indian Health Service," he said. "We have people dying because they can't get health care and then we get a report like this.
The report also represents something of a triumph for whistle-blower protection laws. The investigation was launched after one unnamed insider — identified in the report as a "cognizant property official" — called the GAO's fraud hotline.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Portrait of Mary Frank, whose husband died of lung cancer at the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Credit: Gail Fisher / Los Angeles Times
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
