Adult Supervision Required

National Journal reporter Shane Harris provides further proof of the complete and utter leadership vacuum in Washington in an article introducing Douglas L. Hoelscher, the new executive director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Advisory Committees.

Hoelscher will serve in a key policy-making position as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's "primary representative" to more than 20 advisory boards populated by corporate, government and academic heavyweights; he will also provide "strategic counsel" to Chertoff on such vital issues as terrorist threats to infrastructure and potential attacks employing weapons of mass destruction.

It's quite a career coup for a 28-year-old former Bush campaigner with no management experience whose first government job just 5 years ago was a $30,000 low-level White House staff assignment arranging presidential travel. So maybe it was Hoelscher's personal strengths that catapulted him to power. In his Friendster.com profile, he disclosed: "I'm usually fairly quiet in a group setting. I am not a talker but a pretty good listener."

Whatever. DHS certainly seems confident in its newest top executive. "The administration has named a qualified and talented professional to cultivate these partnerships," commented Stewart A. Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the department.

Then again, that's probably what he said about past DHS appointees, including former FEMA director Michael "You're Doing a Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown, a longtime friend of Bush's 2000 campaign director, Joe Allbaugh; Julie Myers, wife of Chertoff's chief of staff, who without benefit of law enforcement experience heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau; and Eduardo Aguirre Jr., a Texas banker with Bush family ties who served as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

O.K. so not such a great track record. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Hoelscher's youth and inexperience aren't necessarily liabilities. Harris reports one DHS staffer assured him: "There's plenty of adult supervision" at the department.