Bush creates a Republican Party's version of the apparatchik

Talk about irony here. This is off The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The directive issued by Mr. Bush says that, in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify “the specific market failure” or problem that justifies government intervention.

Besides placing political appointees in charge of rule making, Mr. Bush said agencies must give the White House an opportunity to review “any significant guidance documents” before they are issued.

Do you remember the apparatchik? It was a political system designed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where political officers would make sure that the Soviet bureaucracy was following the Communist Party guidelines. These officers never had any specialized or formalized training in whatever offices they were assigned to. Their job was to make sure that the government bureaucracy was toeing the Party line--the Party ideology! Now look at what President Bush has created--an Americanized version of the apparatchik for the Republican Party! These new Republican apparatchik's will look into the bureaucracies of the EPA, or OSHA, or even the FDA, and then demand that those offices follow the Republican Party ideology on issues of global warming, safety, health, environmental, abortion--you name it. It is a Party control mechanism on the government--just like the Communist Party had their own apparatchik control mechanism on the Soviet bureaucracy.

I find it rather ironic how the Republican Party used to be a rabid anti-Communist Party during the 1950s and the McCarthy hearings, but now has adopted the same apparatchik political control system that was made famous by the Communist Party. Orwell would love this Bush-morphed Republican Party.