Zero-Day Exploit
Early in the fall of 2007 Scott Horton initially advocated that Michael Mukasey be confirmed to the post of Attorney General of the Bush Administration, arguing that although Mukasey was of course conservative, he was a thoughtful conservative with a great deal of personal integrity.
Mr. Horton gradually and painfully retreated from both elements of that position, first retracting his advocacy of confirmation for Mukasey, and eventually withdrawing the positive opinion of Mukasey the man.
Now me, I don't travel in rarefied circles where I would get to know a Michael Mukasey, but I could have told Mr. Horton that Mukasey doesn't have any personal integrity, or rather, whatever personal integrity he might have was of lesser importance to Mukasey than his instinct toward authoritarianism and ass-covering for movement conservatism. That was obvious, based on two simple facts: the Bush Administration believed Mukasey to be a suitable candidate for Attorney General, and Mukasey was willing to take the position.
It is theoretically possible that a principled conservative (i.e., not a movement conservative) could have taken a position in the 2000 Bush Administration without understanding the depths of corruption in American conservatism as embodied in the Republican Party leadership. But by 2003, no-one -- and I mean no-one -- of sufficient status to be offered a position in the Bush Administration could have avoided knowing the excremental depth of the cesspool into which they were diving. Anyone willing to take that swim was already corrupt.
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