Demagogue

Excerpts from an editorial in today's New York Times:

President Bush wants to show the nation he's shaking things up in his administration, but it is clear that the people who messed everything up will remain in place. The press secretary goes; the political-and-domestic-policy adviser is losing half his portfolio. There's a new White House chief of staff.

But the folks at the Defense Department are still on the job, doing ... what they've been doing.

Metaphors about deck chairs abound.

And even where the personnel changes are substantive ....

The administration is changing the fiscal team, but doing everything possible to send the signal that there are no new brooms in this venture — just the same old faces with new labels.

Rob Portman will morph from being the trade representative into being the director of the White House budget office. Mr. Portman, a longtime Bush loyalist, used his nomination acceptance speech to champion all the policies that wrecked things in the first place. More tax cuts will be forthcoming, he vowed, and budget cuts will make things balance out in the end.