Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (54122)	10/23/2002 12:20:08 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

absolutely. As I've said before, think "West Wing": Pollack and the vast majority of good professionals are like Fitz (the John Amos Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff character) or Nancy (the Anna Deveare Smith NSA character) or the secret service or FBI guys you occasionally see. They don't always agree with each other, but their disagreements usually center around things like cost, feasibility, competing priorities, and so forth. The vast majority of the WH staff, in contrast--the people who actually fill the roles played by Josh, Toby, Sam, CJ, Leo, etc.--are all like Bruno, Ron Silver's Dick Morris/Karl Rove character. They don't care that much about policy one way or another, only elections, polls, and so forth. In the (second) Bush administration as opposed to the Clinton administration, however, there's also a third category of inside players--the strongly ideological political appointees, people like, oh, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith over at DOD, John Bolton at State, Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby, etc. These folks don't really correspond to anybody on the West Wing because they no longer play a prominent role in the executive branch wing of the Democratic party and thus are not represented on the show, but you can imagine them by looking at Sam or Toby in their "idealistic" moments and multiplying by 2-3. tb@everyone'satvcritic.com