Political Loyalty

We'll probably never tire of comparisons between B. O. & his predesscessor, whose name we dare not speak. More than enough change for us. 

Those presidents who fixated on personal allegiance, such as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush, tended to perform far worse in office than those, such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, who could tolerate strong, independent actors on their teams. [...] The price was a surfeit of reliable hacks such as Alberto Gonzalez and outright incompetents such as Michael Brown ("Heckuvajob, Brownie"). My favorite illustration of the misguided notion of loyalty that ran rife through the Bush years was the testimony of White House Political Director Sara Taylor to the Senate committee investigating the firings of U.S. attorneys deemed insufficiently loyal. Declining to answer a question, Taylor said, "I took an oath to the president." "Did you mean, perhaps," Leahy asked, "that you took an oath to the Constitution

Snap!