Wolfowitz: Couldn’t run a two-car funeral

And, that’s what a friend said about the just-resigned former World Bank director.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the source voiced admiration for his intellect but said Wolfowitz ‘couldn’t run a two-car funeral.’”

Some friends and admirers saw the seeds of Wolfowitz's demise in the arc of his 34-year Washington career. …

Throughout, Wolfowitz built a reputation as a foreign policy iconoclast, a mild-mannered intellectual with a steely ideological core, and an inept manager.

Wolfowitz, they concluded, should never have been in charge of a multinational institution owned by more than 180 governments and with 10,000 employees.

It’s crony politics at it’s usual, which makes one wonder who Bush will choose as Wolfowitz’s replacement.

A friend of mine pointed out this was just another, though a glaring, example of BushCo’s incompetence.

I told him he was right as far as it went, but that he needed to include arrogance in there as well:

The public vitriol that poured from the bank once his fall began in late March with revelations about the deal underscored wider problems.

Far from respecting the bank, member governments and staffers charged, Wolfowitz surrounded himself with doctrinaire former White House and Republican officials and gave them wide authority. He altered long-standing policies and imposed new ones without consulting the staff or member governments. He risked the bank’s credibility and the future of the poor countries it serves.

Why stop with Wolfowitz? Couldn’t we take the majority of Bush’s executive appointees, starting with his naming of Cheney as his vice-presidential nominee, and just “plug the name in”?