By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 10, 2009; A02

Fred F. Fielding, Emmet T. Flood, William A. Burck and Daniel M. Price worked together at the White House under George W. Bush. Less than two weeks before leaving office, Bush made sure the senior aides shared a new assignment, naming them to an obscure World Bank agency called the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

The appointments are for six years and are potentially lucrative, paying up to $3,000 a day plus travel and other expenses if an appointee is chosen to hear a case. Bush also named two other prominent Republican lawyers to the agency, which attempts to broker international finance disagreements.

Bush made more than 100 such end-of-term appointments to a constellation of presidential boards and panels, such as the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and the U.S.-Russia Polar Bear Commission. Like other presidents, he often turned to close aides and top political supporters to fill the last-minute postings, many of which will outlast President Obama's current term.

Nearly half of Bush's appointments after Election Day were filled by donors who gave a total of nearly $1.9 million to Republicans since 2003, according to an analysis of the postings. At least 20 of the positions were filled by former Bush aides, plus others filled by old hands from the administrations of Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Most of the positions are unpaid and are valued more for their status than for monetary compensation. Yet the appointments show how political connections matter even for the most obscure Washington jobs, and they illustrate the extent to which presidents have an impact well after they leave the White House.

"It's a way for an outgoing president to have some ongoing influence, however modest, after he's gone," said Thomas E. Mann, a Brookings Institution scholar. "It also shows you that a lot of people just like positions, names, titles and affiliations, especially if it came from a presidential appointment."

Carlos M. Gutierrez, Bush's last commerce secretary, now sits on the board of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. James W. Holsinger Jr., whom Bush had nominated at one point to be surgeon general, snagged a seat on the fitness council, along with quarterback Eli Manning, figure skater Michelle Kwan and other athletic stars. Condoleezza Rice, in a customary move for former secretaries of state, was named to the board of trustees for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Some boards were particularly popular. Bush named a dozen appointees to the council that oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, including former chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff, former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey, and Elliott Abrams, who was an aide to Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Two major GOP donors -- real estate billionaire Alan I. Casden and former public broadcasting chairman Cheryl F. Halpern -- were also on the list.

The nation's top military colleges were also sought-after destinations. For the U.S. Air Force Academy board of visitors, Bush named former congressman Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), former U.S. trade representative Susan C. Schwab and former White House physician Richard J. Tubb. Fred Malek, who was an aide to Nixon and the elder Bush, was appointed to the board overseeing the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., while former congresswoman Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.) was named to the U.S. Naval Academy board in Annapolis.

The wide array of presidential appointments "perpetrates a merry-go-round of personalities," said Marthena Cowart, spokeswoman for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. "Once you get on the merry-go-round, you never get off, whether you belong there or not."

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that while many of the appointments owe to vanity or good causes, some are also useful for maintaining political influence. "The real question is not only whether they are paid, but what benefits can they pay out from these boards," she said.

Consider the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations, the U.S. government's senior trade advisory panel, which favored several of the free-trade agreements that Bush was unable to push through Congress.

Bush named three members to the panel on Christmas Eve: Carol Ann Bartz, chief executive of Yahoo, who donated about $35,000 to Bush and other Republicans over the past six years; Maria Cino, who organized the 2008 Republican National Convention; and Israel Hernandez, who worked in the Commerce Department and the Bush White House. Their terms last through 2012, allowing them to play a role in influencing trade policy throughout Obama's term.

Many of the appointees had no clear political connections, particularly on some of the more obscure or scientific panels, such as the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science.

The World Bank's settlement center, based in Washington, bills itself as the "leading international arbitration institution" for disputes between nation-states and private corporations. Four White House aides were appointed to the agency on Jan. 6 as conciliators or arbitrators: Fielding, who was chief White House counsel; Flood, a special counsel; Burck, an associate counsel; and Price, a deputy national security adviser. J.C. Boggs, president of the Republican National Lawyers Association, and Ronald A. Cass, who served under Reagan and the elder Bush, were also named.

Conciliators and arbitrators earn "$3,000 per day of meetings or other work performed in connection with the proceedings, as well as subsistence allowances and reimbursement of travel expenses," according to the center's published fee schedule.

But David Theis, a World Bank spokesman, said the agency is set up like a pool, with up to eight appointees from each of the agency's 143 member countries. As a result, he said, about 80 percent of them never participate in a case, and therefore receive no pay.

Bush Was a Big-Government Disaster

He expanded the state, and the idea that the state is incompetent

Nick Gillespie | January 26, 2009

Now that George W. Bush has finally left office, here's a challenge to a nation famous for its proud tradition of invention: Can somebody invent a machine capable of fully measuring the disaster that was the Bush presidency?

Yes, yes, I know that attitudes towards presidencies are volatile. Harry Truman was hated when he left office and look at him now; he's so highly regarded that President Bush thought of him as a role model. There are, I'm sure, still a few William Henry Harrison dead-enders around, convinced that the 31 days the broken-down old general spent as president will someday receive the full glory they deserve.

In a way that was inconceivable when he took office, Bush—the advance man for the "ownership society," smaller and more trustworthy government, and a humble foreign policy—increased the size and scope of the federal government to unprecedented levels. At the same time, he constantly flashed signs of secrecy, duplicity, ineffectiveness and outright incompetence.

Think for a moment about the thousands of Transportation Security Administration screeners—newly minted government employees all—who continue to confiscate contact-lens solution and nail clippers while, according to nearly every field test, somehow failing to notice simulated bombs in passenger luggage.

Or schoolchildren struggling under No Child Left Behind, which federalized K-12 education to an unprecedented degree with nothing to show for it other than greater spending tabs. Or the bizarrely structured Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the largest entitlement program created since LBJ. Or the simple reality that taxpayers now guarantee some $8 trillion in inscrutable loans to a financial sector that collapsed from inscrutable loans.

Such programs were not in any way foisted on Bush, the way that welfare reform had been on Bill Clinton; they were signature projects, designed to create a legacy every bit as monumental and inspiring as Laura Bush's global literacy campaign.

The most basic Bush numbers are damning. If increases in government spending matter, then Bush is worse than any president in recent history. During his first four years in office—a period during which his party controlled Congress—he added a whopping $345 billion (in constant dollars) to the federal budget. The only other presidential term that comes close? Bush's second term. As of November 2008, he had added at least an additional $287 billion on top of that (and the months since then will add significantly to the bill). To put that in perspective, consider that the spendthrift LBJ added a mere $223 billion in total additional outlays in his one full term.

If spending under Bush was a disaster, regulation was even worse. The number of pages in the Federal Registry is a rough proxy for the swollen expanse of the regulatory state. In 2001, some 64,438 pages of regulations were added to it. In 2007, more than 78,000 new pages were added. Worse still, argues the Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy, Bush is the unparalleled master of "economically significant regulations" that cost the economy more than $100 million a year. Since 2001, he jacked that number by more than 70 percent. Since June 2008 alone, he introduced more than 100 economically significant regulations.

At this late date, it may be pointless to argue about the grounds for the invasion of Iraq, which even Bush has (finally) acknowledged were built on sand rather than bedrock. The Iraq war has lasted longer than any American conflict except for Vietnam and has cost more than any shooting match except for World War II. Leave aside for a moment the more than 4,200 U.S. deaths and 30,000 casualties, and ask a very basic question: Did President Bush's prosecution of the war—he declared an end to major hostilities in May 2003—and his direction of the ongoing occupation make you feel better about the government's ability to execute core functions?

Or, like the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina (later made good by shoveling billions of pork-laden tax dollars to the Gulf area) and the rushed, secretive, and ever-changing bailout of the financial sector, did it make you want to simply despair?

Bush's legacy is thus a bizarro version of Ronald Reagan's. Reagan entered office declaring that government was not the solution to our problems, it was the problem. Ironically, he demonstrated that government could do some important things right—he helped tame inflation and masterfully drew the Cold War to a nonviolent triumph for the Free World. By contrast, Bush has massively expanded the government along with the sense that government is incompetent.

That is no small accomplishment—and its pernicious effects will last long after Bush has moved back to Texas, and President Obama has announced that his stimulus package, originally tagged at $750 billion and already up to $825 billion, will cost $1 trillion or more. Bush has cleared the way for President Obama to intervene more and more in the economy and every other aspect of American life.

Last July, the political scientists Philippe Aghion, Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc, and Andrei Shleifer wrote a paper titled "Regulation and Distrust" (PDF). Using data from the World Values Survey, the authors convincingly argue that "distrust influences not just regulation itself, but the demand for regulation." They found that "distrust fuels support for government control over the economy. What is perhaps most interesting about this finding...is that distrust generates demand for regulation even when people realize that the government is corrupt and ineffective."

George W. Bush has certainly taught us that government really can't be trusted to be very effective, or open, or smart. He has also taught us that government can always get bigger on every level and every way. It's a sad lesson that we'll be learning for many years to come.

Nick Gillespie is the editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com. A version of this ran in the Saturday, January 24, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

"It's hard to find a historian who won't say that Bush was the most catastrophic leader the U.S. has ever known,"

Editorials worldwide pillory Bush one final time

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN (Reuters) - Editorial writers around the world have been taking their final printed whacks at George W. Bush, accusing the president of tarnishing America's standing with what many saw as arrogant and incompetent leadership.

Some newspaper editorials, for all their criticism, suggested historians might just be kinder later on than those now writing first drafts of history. A success often cited by those seeking a silver lining was the United States' freedom from further homeland attacks following September 11.

Bush's successor, Barack Obama, will be sworn in as the 44th U.S. president on Tuesday.

"A weak leader, Bush was just overwhelmed in the job," said Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung under a headline: "The Failure." "He confused stubbornness with principles. America has become intolerant and it will take a long time to repair that damage."

Editorials hit out at Bush for two unfinished wars, for plunging the economy into recession, turning a budget surplus into a pile of debt, for his environment policies and tarnishing America's reputation with the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Bush was given credit in some editorials for defending the United States against terror attacks after September 11, 2001.

Israel was most complimentary, of his intentions if not necessarily of his achievements.

"Of all the U.S. presidents over the past 60 years, it is hard to think of a better friend to Israel than George W. Bush," the Jerusalem Post daily wrote during Bush's final visit.

Last week columnist Caroline Glick wrote Bush "recognizes Israel and the U.S. share the same enemies and they seek to destroy us because we represent the same thing: freedom. But Bush never learned how to translate personal views into policy."

Canada's Toronto Star was categorical in its condemnation.

"Goodbye to the worst president ever," it declared. "Bush was an unmitigated disaster, failing on the big issues from the invasion of Iraq to global warming, Hurricane Katrina and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

"Bush leaves a country and an economy in tatters," wrote the Sunday Times in London. It said America's national debt and unemployment nearly doubled on his watch.

Britain's Daily Mail said he entered office with a budget surplus of $128 billion but exits with a $482 billion deficit.

"He leaves the world facing its biggest crisis since the Depression, the Middle East in flames and U.S. standing at an all-time low.

"How will history judge George W.? Have we, perhaps, to quote his own mangled malapropisms, 'misunderestimated' him? On the plus side, after 9/11 he achieved what became his number one priority: to prevent his country suffering further attack on its own soil. Al Qaeda has been hugely weakened."

LEGACY OF WARS

The Scottish Daily Record observed: "America is now hated in many parts of the world. Bush leaves a legacy of wars and the world economy in meltdown. He has been dismissed as a buffoon and a war-monger, a man who made the world a more dangerous place while sending it to the brink of economic collapse."

The Economist found room to praise Bush on free trade, immigration reform and China. But its overall view was negative:

"He leaves as one of the least popular and most divisive presidents in American history. Bush has presided over the most catastrophic collapse in America's reputation since World War Two."

The Sydney Morning Herald complained about Bush's "singular lack of curiosity in international matters" in an editorial titled "Farewell to a flawed and unpopular commander-in-chief."

But it also praised Bush for improving U.S. relations with China and India, his efforts to fight AIDS in Africa. It predicted historians might one day rank Bush in the mid range.

Le Monde disagreed.

"It's hard to find a historian who won't say that Bush was the most catastrophic leader the U.S. has ever known," the French daily wrote. "One success: since September 11, 2001, there was no attack on U.S. soil. But this sits alongside an interminable list of failures, starting with the war in Iraq."

Germany, ridiculed as "old Europe" by Bush's former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for opposing the Iraq invasion, took aim at Bush.

"Bush brought great misery to the world with his 'friend-or-foe' mentality," wrote Die Zeit.

Stern magazine said: "Bush led the world's most powerful nation to ruin. He lied to the world, tortured in the name of freedom and caused lasting damage to America's standing."

The Pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper resorted to bitter black humor under the headline: "We cried a lot and the joke was on us." It recalled his controversial election win in Florida and how he once nearly choked on a pretzel, watching television.

"Perhaps we could say that fate, which let the American people down first in Florida and then with the issue of the pretzel in the president's throat, ultimately helped them by making sure the president would spend half his time on vacation.

"Indeed, he would have caused twice the damage if he had been more active and focused."

Austria's Wiener Zeitung wrote Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad even ranked higher in one international opinion poll than Bush:

"The United States was once the symbol of justice in the world but that has been damaged by Bush. A web of manipulation has cost America $900 billion and the lives of 4,000 soldiers -- along with at least 500,000 Iraqis."

In Poland, the Warsaw daily Dziennik lamented the worst part about Bush's presidency: "It was empty rhetoric."

(Additional reporting by Jakub Jaworoski in Warsaw, Peter Griffiths in London, Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem, and Francois Murphy in Paris; editing by Ralph Boulton).