Eight Years Is More Than Enough

As the sun sets on the Bush administration, the survival rite known as burrowing is under way. Burrowing is when favored political appointees are transformed into civil servants and granted instant tenure on the federal payroll.

There is, of course, nothing new in this cynical practice. Dozens of political loyalists were burrowed in the final months of the Clinton administration. But the score of Bush burrowers who have so far come to light bring with them the worst pro-industry, anti-regulatory biases that have made this administration such a disaster.

At the Interior Department, six senior managers were brazenly burrowed as a package. One of the protected appointees was earlier criticized by the agency’s inspector general for overriding career experts in the field to deliver a posh grazing agreement to a Wyoming rancher. Another has survived in a management position affording clout to continue the scandalous mining industry bias of the Bush years.