I Always Said...

She was the one who wore the pants in the family (link).

Everybody's Out of Step But Paul

To the deluge of postmortems about Paul Wolfowitz, let me add this: by so royally screwing up his own career at the World Bank, he did serious harm to at least two good causes that he purports to support. One is the matter of cleaning up corruption in third world lending. The other is the matter of shaking up the leviathan bureaucracy at the bank itself.

Wolfowitz made corruption in lending his signature issue. Sebastian Mallaby has the right take (link):

Wolfowitz mishandled this challenge so badly that it poisoned his tenure, and the bank's next president will be tempted to avoid it. But the challenge of corruption and, more broadly, of weak institutions in developing nations must not be neglected.

Except that it’s more than just “avoid.” The point is that Wolfowitz made it harder for his successor to tackle corruption, because he has tarred the issue with his own brush. IOW, he’s done the impossible: he’s made fighting corruption look bad.

Re the issue of bureaucracy, Steven R. Weisman’s postmortem in the Times this morning is on point (link). It makes the case that it was bureaucratic blowback, much more than Iraq, that finally brought him down. Anyone who ever watched Sir Humphrey hornswoggle a minister can readily believe this is true (link).

The Wall Street Journal picks up on the same theme. The Journal rightly says (link):

If there is a silver lining here, it is that the public has been able to get a glimpse of how the World Bank works and what it actually accomplishes. Among other lowlights, we've recently been reminded that the bank annually pushes billions in loans to countries like China and Mexico that can easily get credit in private capital markets. We've seen that many of those loans go to projects in places like India or Kenya that are riddled by corruption; the bank may have lost as much as $8 billion to corruption in 25 years of lending to the Suharto regime in Indonesia. We've also learned that the bank funds literally hundreds of projects from Albania to Niger that were ill-conceived and proved to be failures.

We've seen that senior bank personnel, such as former Indonesia country director Dennis de Tray, openly argue that corruption is no big deal and should not get in the way of the bank's "helping people."

This is pretty much dead on. But who is responsible for leaving this mess just as he found it? The question ought to answer himself. Wolfowitz failed here for the same reason he failed at the Pentagon: he screams and hollers. He kicks and yells. Then when he has made an unholy mess of things, he blames everybody else.

There is one important difference between Wolfowitz at the Pentagon and Wolfowitz at the World Bank. That is: the Iraq War never should have been fought. The World Bank really does need to be reformed. Still, in each case, the bad guys have won a round because of the stupidity and incompetence of the supposed good guy himself.

Fn: I might have written the same piece, had I taken the time and trouble, about John Bolton at the UN.

In Which We Find Out Who Wears The Pants

Underbelly’s Fly on the Wall reports:

SR: Say again—you’ve screwed up the war and now you are going to run the World Bank? This had certainly better not cause any problems for my career.

PW: Well, there is some kind of conflict-of-interest rule…

SR: Hah. Rules are for little people. Find away around it.

PW: Well, we could send you to the State Department…

SR: The State Department? That bunch of leftover Carterites? Are you kidding? Anway, they’ve already got a queen bee. And she doesn’t make a penny more than $173,000 a year. I’d need a good $7,000 ahead of that just for my trouble and convenience.

PW: Now Shaha, I am supposed to fight corruption....

SR: Don’t “Now Shaha” me. And what’s corrupt about getting your girlfriend a good job? $180,000 to start. And with eight percent annual raises.

PW: Shaha, Shaha, Shaha…

SR: Oh, quit sounding like the Little Engine that Could. $180,000 and tax free. Otherwise, you can just go see if your ex wife will answer your phone calls.

Been a long time since we’ve seen a public official quite so clearly bullied by his girlfriend. Thanks, you know who you are, although you may not want the credit.

The Question at Lunch: Haremour

The Question at Lunch was: what to call Paul Wolfowitz’s cookie. Okay, cookie is not right, but what is? “Principal squeeze” sounds down-market. “Lover” has too much perfume. “Partner” and “companion” fit some relationships but perhaps not this one. Someone suggested “paramour,” which may have to do—but in the clutter of the moment, I heard it as

Haremour

Now, there is a word that deserves a place in the language, as in: he doesn’t have just one, he has a whole harem of them. Whether it fits here I do not know. It surely fits someplace, but maybe in this case, we should just settle for “transitional wife.”

Fn: The Online Etymology Dictionary (link) adds:

Originally a term for Christ (by women) or the Virgin Mary (by men)

No, I guess not.

Must Read of the Day

Here's my must read for the morning: State Department can't even find the outfit where Wolfie's sweetie works (and which costs us $35 million). Maybe we could offer a bounty.

Update: The link refers to the girlfriend's org as the "Foundation for the Future." I don't have time to pursue this, but when you go to the Website of the "Foundation for the Future," you come to an outfit that seems to be entirely different.