Bush's War On the Bureaucracy -- Wolfie at the World Bank

Reuters reports:

By Lesley Wroughton - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Wolfowitz is sending shock waves through the World Bank as he begins exerting his influence -- starting with a crackdown on corruption -- less than a year after arriving from the Pentagon with a reputation as a neoconservative ideologue.

Wolfowitz's nomination by President George W. Bush to head the world's largest development lender was controversial from the start because of his role as an architect of the Iraq war.

Eight months into his tenure, critics, including veteran bank officials who have left in an exodus of managers, say Wolfowitz has centralized his authority through an inner circle of advisors mostly from the Pentagon and White House.

Read it here.

How dare he crack down on corruption? It's the name of the game among NGOs.

These complaints are pretty much the same thing we have heard from "former" mid- to upper- level officials in the Pentagon, at State, in the intelligence community, at the UN, and recently at Justice. Bush is cleaning house and serving notice that the comfortable and corrupt forms of business as usual will no longer be tolerated.

For decades administrations have declared their determination to reform the huge bureaucracies that took root during the Cold War [remember the "Gore Commission" report?]. Clinton made some tentative efforts at reform, but Dubya is the first President to take substantive action across a broad front. More power to him. In the end, this may be his most important domestic legacy.