“”We’ve been a remarkably stable administration, and I think that’s good for the country,” he [Bush] said.” — today’s NY Times.

I know this blog is meant to studiously avoid politics, but I can’t let this quote pass. Is this a lie, or is he just stupid? As usual, it’s both, and there’s nothing worse than a stupid liar.

Aside from the usual (albeit unusually large and significant) first-term resignations, like Secretary of State Colin Powell, Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge, Treasury Secretary John Snow and UN Ambassador John Danforth …

… there are plenty of surprising and untimely ones (and will be more soon, I bet):

–Andrew Card, joint chief of staff, resigned today
–Gale Norton, Secretary of Interior, resigned last month
–W. Scooter Libby, Vice Prez aide, indicted on felony and resigned (but not fired, of course)
–Claude Allen, President Bush’s principal domestic policy advisor, resigned after his arrest for shoplifting a little while ago (but not fired, of course).
–Susan Wood, who was head of the Office of Women’s Health in the US Food & Drug Adminstration, resigned 2005.
–Michael Brown, underqualified FEMA head and close Bush friend, thrown to wolves, 2006
–Donald Evans, Commerce Secretary and close Bush friend, resigned suprisingly in 2005.
–Anthony Principi, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, resigned 2004 for reasons still unspecified
–Eric Schaeffer, head of the EPA’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement, as protest in 2002.
–George Tenet, FBI administrator (not surprising, but sudden) in 2004, prior to re-election
–Kenneth Tomlinson, Chairman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, resigned in Nov of 2005 due to investigations of improper financial dealings with consultants. Placed on the board by Clinton, he was made board head by Bush in 2003.
Paul O’Neill, Treasury Secretary, ‘resigned’ 2002 and now an adminstration critic.

Geez. Most presidents suffer staff resignations, but you’d have to be drunk to think this was ‘remarkably stable.’

Drunk, I said.