Newsday.com: Inside the Kerik mess

Newsday.com: Inside the Kerik mess:
"On Thursday, the day before he took his name from contention, Kerik, 49, was forced to testify in a civil lawsuit about an alleged affair with a subordinate."

When did the Bush White House decide to become The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight?

This story reminded me of Gary Aldrich's book Unlimited Access. For those who don't recall, Aldrich was one of two FBI agents assigned, at the time Clinton came into office, to the White House as liaison officers to the bureau. One of their primary missions was shuffling the papers regarding background checks on presidential appointees. This was an arrangement that went back through several administrations of both parties to give the president timely information about problems with potential nominees before they were announced. Where other administrations had viewed this arrangement as a way to avoid embarrassment to the president, Clinton's White House chose to see it as an barrier to nominating the unsuitable personnel they wanted.

Aldrich has described, in Unlimited Access and other writing since, how the Clintons systematically dismantled the safeguards in the vetting process. One has to wonder if the Bush team has succumbed to the Clintonian hubris on this issue. Remember that Clinton put up two candidates for attorney general who had to be withdrawn because they employed "undocumented" domestics and/or evaded payroll taxes on them - just like Kerik.