NYT: Bush Crises Raise Criticism of Chief of Staff (Card's) Management [View All]

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Bush Crises Raise Criticism of Chief of Staff's Management
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: October 18, 2005


WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 - With Karl Rove distracted by the intensifying C.I.A. leak scandal, some of the Bush administration's other challenges in recent months have cast a longer shadow on Andrew H. Card Jr., for years a guiding force as the White House chief of staff.
His office oversaw the administration response to Hurricane Katrina, coordinating federal assistance that was broadly condemned as too slow. Mr. Card personally managed the selection of Harriet E. Miers for the Supreme Court, a choice that has splintered the Republican Party and left the administration scrambling to rescue her nomination.

The confluence of crises, all running through Mr. Card's suite just steps from the Oval Office, has some critics asking whether Mr. Card needs to clean house or assert himself more forcefully - or at least consider a course correction before Mr. Bush is downgraded permanently to lame duck status....

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Mr. Card himself is rarely a target of criticism. Far more than other senior administration officials, he is admired by the staff, the president and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle here....

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But his reputation as an effective steward of the executive bureaucracy has become harder to defend in light of recent events. Some critics of the administration ask whether previous chiefs of staff - imperious figures like James A. Baker III or Donald T. Regan - would have let so many problems accumulate....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/politics/18card.html?hp&ex=1129608000&en=e890ad69eedb2f6d&ei=5094&partner=homepage