Tilting at Windmills: - Bureaucratic Buddies Pentagon Payoffs White's Flights Mrs. Iron Triangle Judicial Mating Love vs. Manolo Blahniks

Washington Monthly, May, 2002 by Charles Peters

IN LATE SEPTEMBER, A COUPLE of weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center had sobered even the most frivolous Manhattanite, The New York Times interviewed some of the city's singles to find out how their lifestyle had been changed by the tragedy. Most replied that finding a serious committed partner had become a much higher priority. One of them, Olga Valdes, "who had spent much of her professional life as a marketing executive," had just met a handsome architect from New Hampshire: "I felt this pure honesty coming from him ... I've met the man I'm going to marry." As time went by, the epiphanies of 9/11 began to fade. Ms. Valdes went to New Hampshire to visit her architect. When she suggested he needed a new fence he told her that it would cost a lot of money, $400 to be exact. "I was thinking to myself, `The shoes on my feet are $400.'"

The relationship ended. "He's a wonderful guy, but when reality set in I realized that our goals and ambitions were too different. He had a lifestyle on completely the opposite end of the spectrum of anything I've ever had."

Of course. After all, what's pure honesty compared to $400 shoes?

DID YOU READ ABOUT THE PENTAGON civil servant who used her government credit card for $12,000-worth of personal expenses? The bureaucratically innocent may assume that she was fired. Those who know the civil service know better. She has transferred, but she still works for the Pentagon. She wasn't even asked to repay the $12,000. Can anything be done about this problem? Do we have to keep incompetent or misbehaving civil servants forever? There is an answer to the problem, and it comes from the Peace Corps, which has a system of two-and-a-half-year appointments. It's still hard to get rid of the bad apples immediately, but you don't have to keep them around for life. When their appointments are up, you simply don't renew them.

M. DIANE ALLBAUGH, THE WIFE of FEMA director Joe Allbaugh, has joined the lobbying firm headed by former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour. She says she won't work on any matters involving FEMA. But it's hard to believe her clients, including three energy companies, care that much about FEMA. Her much more important asset is the fact that, since her husband made up, along with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, the "Iron Triangle" that guided George W. Bush through the Texas governorship to the White House, it is just possible that his influence extends beyond FEMA.

EARLY IN THE MORNING OF Aug. 21 of last year, Chang Wu, a broker at PaineWebber's Houston office, emailed his clients that Enron's "financial condition is deteriorating" and urged them to reduce their holdings in the company's stock.

When an Enron executive found out about the email later in the day, he sent a message to Wu's superiors at PaineWebber saying "Please handle this situation. This is extremely disturbing to me." Three hours later, Wu was fired. Could this have had anything to do with these facts, reported by Richard A. Oppel, Jr. of The New York Times: "PaineWebber managed Enron's stock option program for employees and handled brokerage accounts for many company executives. It also did substantial investment banking work for Enron, which generated fees for the firm"?

THE COURTSHIP OF CLERKS HAS become one of the minor scandals of the federal judiciary. Judges have always sought the best law-school graduates to serve for one or two years as their clerks. The reason is simple: the brighter and more industrious the clerk, the better the judge looks and the easier his job is. Traditionally, the mating game began in the student's third year, but competition gradually moved it back into the second year, further intruding the distraction of future employment into the students' legal education. Now there is supposed to be a reform. A plan devised by two circuit court judges, Edward A. Becker and Harry T. Edwards, provides for a moratorium on recruiting second-year law students starting this coming fall and the resumption of the traditional third-year hiring the following year.

This plan is said to have the support of 92 percent of federal judges. But if 8 percent are going to sin and try to make off with the cream of the potential clerk crop, won't the righteous zeal of the other jurists quickly fade, as they scramble to avoid being left with the less-stellar? One is reminded that a previous reform, an attempt to forbid hiring before noon of March 1, fell apart when, as The Washington Post's Neely Tucker describes it: "Judges who called at noon found their chosen students had been snatched away by colleagues whose watches seemed to be running a few minutes fast."

MICHAEL KELLY, THE COLUMNIST and editor of The Atlantic, has long been one of the most dedicated frothers-at-the-mouth whenever Bill Clinton's name is mentioned. But he may have outdone himself recently when he described the source of "the nearly unbelievable degree of his essential unfitness to be president--his profound immaturity, his pathological selfishness, his cynicism, above all his relentless corruption."