It just looks like change

A good post at Daily Kos, about why the White House "shake-up" is bullshit.

But this isn't change. This is musical chairs.

It's a choreographed dance where staffer X moves from point A to point B while staffer Y moves from point B to point A. Let's take Joel Kaplan (already working in the White House as deputy budget director) and give him the spanking new job of...working in the White House (this time as deputy chief of staff for policy).

Let's take Josh Bolten (who worked in the White House as policy coordinator) and use his talents....in the White House (this time as chief of staff). Let's take Rob Portman (appointed by Bush as his U.S. Trade Rep) and have him appointed now as OMB director.

It's the same old pattern. Need a new Secretary of State? Look no further than your National Security Advisor. Need a Supreme Court Justice? Look no further than your personal lawyer (until the right-wing takes her down). Need a new Health & Human Services Secretary? Just transfer over the guy you appointed as head of the EPA. As Josh Marshall opines, where are the new faces? There will never be new faces. Why?

Because Bush. Doesn't. Do. Change.

That's because what Bush really doesn't do is admit mistakes, and making meaningful changes to his staff would be to admit mistakes by appointing the people in the first place.

And he's going to be especially inflexible if there are popular calls for a change, which is why Donald Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere. Retired generals' calls for Rummy's firing are actually doing wonders for the Donald's job security, because Bush isn't going to be swayed by logic, reason or the wisdom and experience of the people explaining why Rummy must go. He's the commander-in-chief, dammit, and no lowly retired generals are going to tell him what to do. That these men have forgotten more about combat, tactics and the realities of military life than George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney will ever, ever know is 100 percent irrelevant.

But the real message here is that, as in all things the Bush administration does, perception trumps reality. Scott McClellan was shown the door not becuase he was doing his slimy work poorly, but because he was the dissembling public face of a dissembling administration. And Karl Rove's title shift is about as meaningful as title promotions employers offer their workers instead of raises.

These high-profile changes are merely cosmetic, a piss-poor effort to boost the public's piss-poor perception of Bush. A new White House spokesman isn't going to make the troops any safer, slow the civil war in Iraq, shrink the budget deficit, rebuild New Orleans, provide health care for one more American or create one new job. So as long as George Bush rejects meaningful change in his administration and policies, don't look for meaningful change in his poll numbers, either.