Greg,

In politics Lieutenants pose several problems depending on who they are:

1) They weren't around when the voting was going on.

2) They don't ever have to answer, directly for their actions, either of commission or omission.

3) They have a bad habit (whether public or private) of deciding what the boss needs to know. And what he doesn't need to know. Their loyalty to the voters is secondary.

4) They tend to be experts in specific fields. As such, their decisions are often constrained to their field of expertise. In business, the cry was "the bean counters are in control". In politics, people find that all the advisory boards and staff filter (consciously or unconsciously) the ideas that flow upward. Some ideas never get debated because the unknown "they" decided not to pursue it because (a) Ins impractical (b) the Boss wouldn't like it (c) we've never done it that way before.... and so on.

W seems to be in the old fashioned Chairmen of the Board mode. "I've hired good people, now let them do their job." Except that is the logic of business, not politics. Do you run the country like a business in a businesslike manner?

More and more (and not just W), our politicians seem to be working very hard to further the tendency toward oligarchy. Rather than basing the power elite on money, birth or such, it's based on "experts" who foster the myth that their specialized knowledge is needed to make these complex decisions. W is doing it with his budget, with the underlying assumption that an expert must be right because he's an expert. That tautology is dangerous, and not just because it's W.

Regards

John