Senior Administration Official Guessing Game: Damage Control

Which of this week’s totally shocking surprising Earth-shattering unexpected new reveals did you like more: the memos that showed Bush was set on war in January ‘03 (WHAT?!?) or this here that shows everyone knew the aluminum tubes were bullshit long before they used them in the SOTU and pinned a rationale on ‘em (NO WAY!)?

Being generally unshockable types, we’re more intested in the identities of these two:

“Presidential knowledge was the ball game,” says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. “The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn’t in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn’t do that with the tubes.” A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: “This was about getting past the election.”

So — we have a couple ideas, but we’d like to hear yours. If you can divine any clues from those descriptions, let us know who you’re thinking and why.

Insulating Bush [National Journal]

READ MORE: aluminum tubes, guessing game, iraq, political appointees, senior government officials, war

New Fed Governor Loves Dave Matthews, Reports New Republic

We must admit, when we see a piece in The New Republic headlined “Another suspect Bush Appointee,” our eyes tend to glaze over. Were we to see one titled “Good Job with that Appointee There, Mr. President,” we would be more interested (but not much more inclined to actually read the piece), after, of course, checking the date to make sure that it wasn’t a holdover from the days when Bush could do no wrong in their moderate-classical-liberal-whatever eyes.

What we’re saying is we skipped this piece last week. And now we regret it. Because Bush has appointed his funniest unqualified hack yet.

Clayton points out that Warsh was frequently in the top of his class at Morgan Stanley when he came up for evaluation. But some former colleagues found him exceedingly glib. “He was all form, no substance,” says one. “He called everyone ‘bra.’ ‘Hey, bra. Whatcha working on, bra? Got any capacity? I’ve got a new deal for you.’ … He was good at little speeches: ‘Guys, you should be excited to be at Morgan Stanley. There’s lots of cool stuff going on.’”

The kind soul who let us know the important bits of this piece was also conscientious enough to send us a picture of this new member of the Federal Reserve board (which TNR helpfully remind us is “by far the most influential actor in the global economy”):

We love this greasy-haired frat guy. And we’d love to know even more about him. Is he pounding back Old Milwaukee with the rest of the board? Does he refer to consumer confidence as being “wicked high”? Are there pictures of him with collar popped? If you’ve had the pleasure of receiving one his his legendary pep talks, let us know all about it.

(Pictured with him, by the way, is wife Jane Lauder, granddaughter of Estée, who we’re sure he calls his “bitch.” Always remember, Mr. Warsh: Bros before hoes.)

Another Suspect Bush Appointee [TNR]

READ MORE: bras, bros, fed, federal reserve, frat guys, kevin warsh, political appointees, unqualified hacks