In Need of Adult Supervision: our National Government

Colonel Larry Wilkerson was Colin Powell's right hand man in the State Department. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post writes, "he was often described by colleagues as the man who would say what Powell was thinking but was too discreet to say." Now Colonel Wilkerson is speaking out loud and clear:

He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy. He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak." Of American diplomacy, he fretted, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore."

As a friend emailed me refering to this piece, "The wheels are finally coming off the cart -- or cabal." (Question: Did Yogi Berra ever comment on the wheels coming off the horse? If not, he should have.) Here's more from Milbank on the fracturing of the Bush coalition:

David Frum, a former White House speechwriter, is campaigning against confirmation of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the president's father, was fired by his think tank this week because he is publishing a book titled "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

Beyond responding with barely disguised glee, how do we, the loyal opposition, offer a meaningful alternative to the current mismanagement of our national government? Here's a start: Campaign as the party of adult supervision. (The notion goes back to Josh Marshall, who wrote of "embracing our destiny as the party of grown-ups back in April.) A common thread running through the disasters brought on by the current Republican regime is the lack of accountability: Deficits don't matter. Open up the treasury to corporate interests. Damn the facts; on to Iraq. Hire the hapless. I could go on...
The enablers in this debacle have been the Republican moderates, who still believe that government should be well-run, instead of being run into the ground. Where were Colin Powell and Colonel Wilkerson when the bogus intelligence was being spread around like so much manure? Powell, good soldier that he is, carried out his orders instead of carring out his duty to keep our country safe and strong. His acquiesence left our foreign policy in the hands of faith-based ideologues, whose refrain of "stay the course" is wearing thin.
UPDATE: The Washington Note has the transcript of Wilkerson's speech.