A Memo to All Former Bush Appointees

MEMORANDUM

To: Former Bush Appointees
From: Reality-Based Community
About: Message Discipline

You are free. You aren't under message discipline anymore. You can say what you think. You don't have to pretend that the invasion of Iraq was a component of a well-thought-out plan. You don't have to pretend that the things Bush does to boost the deficit are policies of economic genius.

Glenn Hubbard, for example, has broken free. The Wall Street Journal reports:

WSJ.com - Former Bush Adviser Criticizes Drug Plan: R. Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, says the Bush-backed expansion of Medicare to include prescription drugs was "unwise."

"The Medicare expansion without substantial reform of the system was unwise fiscal policy," Mr. Hubbard, now dean of Columbia University's business school, said in an online exchange sponsored by The Wall Street Journal. "The current Social Security and Medicare systems are on an unsustainable path," Mr. Hubbard said in the exchange with Robert Reich, a Brandeis University professor who served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. "In both cases, sound fiscal reform should involve slower benefit growth for high-income households. In addition, fiscal reform for Medicare must be accompanied by reform of health-care markets."...

Mr. Hubbard was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers from February 2001 until March 2003, where he advised President Bush on economic, tax and budget policy, international finance and health care, among other issues.