Poor Paul...

Steven Weisman offers us an all-too-sympathetic Paul Wolfowitz retrospective:

Now, as friends and critics sort through the wreckage of Mr. Wolfowitz’s bank career, they wonder if it was doomed from the outset. Supporters say he arrived at the bank, a citadel of liberalism, from a four-year stint at the Pentagon, where he was an early champion of going to war with Iraq and left bearing its stigma. [...] But others say Mr. Wolfowitz repeated the mistakes he had made at the Pentagon: adopting a single-minded position on certain matters, refusing to entertain alternative views, marginalizing dissenters.

Look, I have no doubt Wolfowitz was doomed from the state. But to comprehend his doomed-ness and what to make of it, one needs to step back. Why was he given the job in the first place? He had no obviously qualifications for it. He's read some neoliberal political commentary about the need for international development strategies to focus more on good governance. I've read that stuff, too. As have a lot of people. It's convincing stuff. But, genuinely, folks who've read it are a dime a dozen in this town. Do I get to run the World Bank? No. Wolfowitz had no genuine expertise in Africa, in development policy, in economics, in governance, or in any of the relevant fields.

What he did have, that I lacked, was a track-record as a high-level political employee. It was a track-record marked by . . . spectacular failure. Failure so spectacular that George W. Bush decided Wolfowitz needed to be fired from his job because he was so incredibly bad at it. In order to fire him while minimizing feather-rumpling, he was dumped on the Bank, even though he had no relevant expertise and a long track-record of failure (think Team B) in his previous work. So, yes, he was doomed from the start. Boo-hoo.

Comments

Truly--say it, brotha! And the whole notion that more's the pity for Wolfowitz' departure from the World Bank, except as regards (minorly) the fortunes of his sole remining constituent at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is an exercise in the most banal neocon navel-gazing. This guy was bringing nothing to the party, and trashing it, too.

Posted by elle loco | May 18, 2007 1:15 PM

how long before the wing-nuts focus on his time at Johns Hopkins, and tell us he went bad because he was a pointy-headed intellectual?

you see, he was never really a *conservative*, because conservatives can't possibly fail....

Posted by sais | May 18, 2007 1:16 PM

Careful, Matty, or else Andy Sullivan will give you a Malkin Award.

Posted by Jimmm | May 18, 2007 1:22 PM

now that you're 26, you're realizing some important matters about how the world works, one of which is that failure at the top is rarely acknowledged, much less an impediment to staying at the top!

think about all the hack coaches and managers who keep getting recycled....

Posted by howard | May 18, 2007 1:30 PM

Matt, once you're on the high-level-political-appointee gravy chain, there's never any punishment for failure. (self-link)

Posted by Constantine | May 18, 2007 1:33 PM

What really astonishes me about this whole fiasco is the past week of "negotiation" about the extent to which the bank or Wolfie will take blame for his fuckups.

I mean seriously, they did the whole charade in public. Does anyone seriously think that Wolfie's next employer will study whatever document comes out of that negotiation and say "hmmmm, well, it says that they shared the blame so I guess it's safe to hire Wolfie". For God's sake, everyone reading a paper in the past week knows he was getting canned for corruption and nepotism. It's not like he is some low-level nobody trying to protect his resume.

Why did he not just agree to resign "to spend more time with his family" like is usually done in these cases?

Posted by Kent from Waco | May 18, 2007 2:14 PM

Although it is de regeur to beat up on Wolfowitz, it should be remembered that he was the Palestinians' best friend in the Dubya administration. He advocated for a two state solution, even before hostile audiences like AIPAC. Although I think he was wrong, he showed some cajones standing there and taking the brickbats from his erstwhile fiiends in the peanut gallery.

Posted by SLC | May 18, 2007 2:32 PM

Matt may be correct, but what, exactly, makes Wolfowitz different from the vast majority of those working at the higher levels of international organizations? My (admittedly anecdotally informed) impression is that many of these organizations serve primarily as sinecures for bureaucratic apparatchiks from countries of middling global importance. Thus, I'm not sure whether Wolfowitz's appointment to the World Bank offers us an opportunity to criticize Bush for yet another example of his affection for cronyism or simply another example of the general uselessness of most international institutions.

Posted by Richard | May 18, 2007 2:34 PM

i bear note a chinchilla of sympathy for wolfowitz.

his tenure at the World Bank was bought by his credentials from the PNAC, of which he was a prominent Cabalista.

he will graduate from the World bank to the boardrooms of numerous, neo-liberal/global corporations, notably those with importqant Israeli contacts.

he will no doubt be invited by Georgetown or GMU or one of the other 'beltway credential factories' to join the faculty, alongside the OTHER 'dumbest fucker on the planet,' douggie feith (another PNACabalista; foookin amazin' coincidence, n'est pas?), where he'll collect a fat salary for one or two courses a year...

in the longer view, nothing the Busheviks do is either incomprehensible or surprising when you have internalized one important fact:
their one, and only, job since jan 20, 2001, has been to attack and where at all possible to destroy the instruments and institutions of democratic republican self-governance in the USofA, to overturn the Constitution, and to undermine the faith and trust of the People in their own elected representatives.

wolfie's just another of their successes.

mission accomplished...

Posted by WoodyG'sGuitar, tokin liberal | May 18, 2007 2:58 PM

Richard, with very few exceptions, World Bank presidents have had very successful private-sector careers as - surprise! - bankers. The word "Bank" in the name World Bank is not a metaphor. It is a financial institution and the person who runs it needs a high degree of expertise and credibility in international finance.

PS- World Bank presidents are not from "countries of middling global importance." They are Americans. The president appoints them.

Posted by Bloix | May 18, 2007 3:51 PM

Kent: "Does anyone seriously think that Wolfie's next employer will study whatever document comes out of that negotiation and say "hmmmm, well, it says that they shared the blame so I guess it's safe to hire Wolfie". "

I assume that his next 'employer' will be hiring him for no honest reasons whatsoever. They know the score, and corruption is part of the game. Probably almost all of the game, with thin paint job of respectability.

Posted by Barry | May 18, 2007 4:02 PM

I think Steve Weisman was one of the many Times journalists with a conservative world view hired during the AM Rosenthal era. His reporting for Europe was always filled with the tired old non-competitive Europe that can't make the tough and forceful foreign policy decisions needed to combat evil in the world.

Posted by Times observer | May 18, 2007 4:29 PM

Not to worry, there is still a need for Wolfowitz's particular executive talents in a number of organizations, some of which I've suggested today in my blog. If none of these work out, it's worth recalling that some time back he was designation Washington's "most important underling."

Posted by Robert Stein | May 18, 2007 5:10 PM

Looks like we know where a certain Attorney General will be going come June.

And let me just say that i too bear note of chinchilla.

Posted by m.swann | May 18, 2007 8:25 PM

5 bucks says Wolfowitz gets nominated to replace Gonzalez...

Posted by Discoman | May 18, 2007 11:09 PM

It isn't like the World Bank was some highly functional super-force that Wolfowitz ruined or brought down. The World Bank is and perhaps always has been a bloated bureaucracy, supported only by the generosity of its member nations. Its leaders aren't going to be and perhaps don't need to be crack development experts, exemplified by the 20 year reign of ex-Ford CEO and disgraced former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera. This isn't to say that McNamera did a great job and that is a mold we should follow, but I agree with Richard and think your expectations for the leadership are too high.

Posted by No Meat | May 19, 2007 11:02 AM

Wolfowitz is one example of why I find the "The Bush Administration is so incompetent" argument inadequate to explain how come (in the immortal words of Jane Hamsher) "everything they touch turns to shit". That is their goal, isn't it? To prove that governments and their agencies are incompetent and the private sector can do it better. With a little help from military power, of course.

He gets away with murder because he looks like a cuddly little absent-minded professor. One of his friends said he admired Wolfowitz' intellect, but that the guy "couldn't arrange a 4-car funeral".

I'm being a little incoherent here because my head is exploding and that's a distraction. Must work a little harder on my "everything they touch turns to shit because they want it to" thesis.

Posted by Tilli (Mojave Desert) | May 20, 2007 2:53 AM

Most comments on the long drawn-out third rate soap opera that features Paul Wolfowitz's involuntary exit from the World Bank appear to miss one vital point : The World Bank has precious little reputation to protect, for the good reason that it is an institution that exists for the sole purpose of enabling the Western powers to continue to exploit Third World countries. As such, it is actually a thinly disguised instrument for achieving the same purposes as gun boat "diplomacy" : Enforcing the ugly will of the self-proclaimed lords and masters of the earth...
The George W. Bush jnr Administration definitely got it right when it nominated Wolfowitz to the post. It is the ruthlessness of the enforcer rather than banking credientials that are required for the post. The real gripe of the World Bank officialdom over Wolfie's performance in the job is that he brought too little finesse to the task by overtly going after those countries that happened to have displeased Washington with a big stick...
Tony Blair would obviously make a good choice for next World Bank President, as he comes equipped with a chilling combination of cynical disregard for truth, a marked penchant for sanctimonious preacherlike assertion of obvious falsehoods, and a remarkable ability to believe in his own lies...
Every reasonable person should root for Tony Blair : It would be a shame to leave such a hugely talented performer unemployed for too long...

Posted by Iroko | May 20, 2007 5:37 AM

More on Tony Blair's eminent qualifications for the World Bank job : (culled from "Atlantic unbound" edition of April 23rd 2007)

(...) Blair should be known as "BLIAR"—as one native placard branded him. (...) an anecdote about another British leader captures the BLIAR essence: "‘Dicky,’ Field Marshall Templer said to Lord Mountbatten, ‘you’re so crooked that if you swallowed a nail you’d shit a corkscrew.’" Inveterately dishonest about matters small and large, Blair is free of principle, historical knowledge, reading, or ideas. His intellect begins and ends on his tongue. Says the novelist Doris Lessing: "He believes in magic. That if you say a thing, it is true. I think he’s not very bright in some ways." Blair enraptured liberal American journalists ("the leader of the free world," Paul Berman effused) with his accent, fluency, show of eloquence, and, above all, moral earnestness. As to that, a "Whitehall joke" early in Blair’s tenure had it that the Downing Street answering machine "asked callers to ‘leave a message after the high moral tone.’" Blair is deeply religious and, partly from that, deeply unscrupulous. Like Bush, he acts on the antinomian precept that "to the pure, all things are pure." Bismarck’s cold-blooded realism, according to A. J. P. Taylor, "could not rival the freedom from the principles and scruples of this world which is given by devotion to a supernatural cause." "That describes Blair exactly," Wheatcroft writes. Echoing Bush, Blair avows, "God will be my judge." God save us from these one-constituent politicians.

By his maidenly surrender to Bush—"We will stay with you to the last," "I’m there to the very end," "I said I’m with you. I mean it"—Blair has made Britain "an American client state." It isn’t only Blair who’s been "pitifully diminished" by serving as a human shield" for Bush; it’s the British people. At the St. Petersburg summit, after Bush "Yo, Blaired!" him, Blair revealed the self-contempt beneath his groveling. Before he detected and "hurriedly switched off" a microphone, he volunteered to help Bush’s diplomacy in the Mideast. "I don’t know what you guys have talked about, but, as I say, I am perfectly happy to try and see what the lie of the land is…" Bush reminded him that he was sending Secretary of State Rice to the region. "Well…it’s only if, I mean…you know. If she’s got a…or if she needs the ground prepared, as it were… Because obviously if she goes out, she’s got to succeed, as it were, whereas I can go out and just talk." Indeed. When Britain appointed a new ambassador to the U.S. after 9/11, a Blair courtier told him: "We want you to get up the arse of the White House and stay there." But the Prime Minister had got up there ahead of him.

George W. Bush need look no further to find a fitting replacement for poor Paul Wolfowitz. - Tony Blair is best suited for the position.

Posted by Iroko | May 20, 2007 6:00 AM

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