Arrivederci, Wolfie?
The White House is now signaling that Paul Wolfowitz is welcome to quit the World Bank to spend more time with his family . . . er, main squeeze but will not abide his being fired.
There is a certain inevitability to this turn of events, and there are rumors that Wolfowitz will bail as early as Wednesday afternoon.
He no longer has the support of backers at the bank whom he did not personally install, but Juan Cole is hip to a more salient reason:
In the end, his career suffered remarkably little from his substantive policy mistakes. But once he moved beyond the forgiving world of high Republican Party politics, his dependence on cronyism finally caught up with him. That he ran into such trouble at the World Bank for behaving in ways that apparently were business as usual for him at the Department of Defense only underlines how corrupt the Bush administration really is.
Inevitable as this may be, I myself am kinda sad. Wolfowitz skates on being a key architect of the disaster that is the war in Iraq but gets nabbed for a penny-ante act of nepotism.
6 Responses to “Arrivederci, Wolfie?”
What’s laughable is that after a month of negative headlines about Wolfie’s misconduct, the administration now only cares about appearances, not if any of the charges against him were true or if he performed well at the Bank. Par for the course for them.
I was wondering why this counterpoint did not get any play? Not at TMV, of course, because centrics only want to post up one side of any given story, but one would think it would be at least a decent piece of intra-negotiation leverage for the Wolfowitz side.
After Mr. Coll recommended that any future raises for Ms. Riza should be contingent on a review of her work outside the bank by “a committee of her peers,” Mr. Coll wrote that “this addition brought the process for potential promotions more in line with current practice at the Bank. I felt that, on balance, this was a reasonable way to move forward and find a solution given the very complex and difficult set of circumstances.”
Based on our fast reading late yesterday of the final investigating committee report, we could not find these quotes from Mr. Coll’s memos. Yet they clearly show that Mr. Coll thought at the time that Mr. Wolfowitz was trying his best to come to a fair conclusion that would not harm Ms. Riza, would protect the bank from any possible litigation, and would do well by bank rules.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010075
Nonetheless, if the fight for survival is indeed over, I can only hope Volcker is the next US placement there. If anyone can claim a resume of both knowing banking cold and knowing how to reform such, it is he.
casualobserver,
I have that article in my list of items for pending posts. I was waiting for the endgame to play out before posting on it. Those who decided long ago that Wolfowitz is automatically guilty of anything he is accused of no matter what don’t have any need to wait until the evidence is in, of course, nor do they have any desire to deal with uncomfortable contrary evidence like the buried Coll memos. :+)
But I was planning to post on it. Do not assume that all TMV contributors share the same views.
Even if the scandal became overblown- what good would it do to force those at the Bank, who have already expressed other reservations about Wolfowitz’s leadership, to accept his continued presence? How effective would he be after this? The complaints about his girlfriend were not his only problem there- he was said to be insular, choosing not to consult experienced leadership at the Bank.
That is what a lot of the Europeans are angry about. His two top aides were brought over from Dept of Defense and had little or no development experience. Even so, they were paid more than Wolfie’s girlfriend. I can’t see how anyone can still defend keeping him there.
kritter, the question isn’t just whether the scandal was “overblown” but rather whether it may have been entirely trumped up in order to get Wolfowitz out, either because they don’t like his political ideology or because they are trying to stop him from investigating their own corruption.
I don’t think your characterizations of what some European members dislike about Wolfowitz capture the full range of real motives. As someone who has to research and teach about the World Bank, I’m convinced that there is some cause for concern about the way in which the anti-Wolfowitz campaign has emerged. There’s lots more rotten at the World Bank than just Wolfowitz.
I’m sure they don’t like his political ideology. He was the chief architect of the Iraq War and thus was an unlikely candidate for an organization that aims to keep the peace through fighting world poverty. And yes, I am sure that there is a certain amount of corruption, especially in dealing with third world countries that don’t really see it as a serious crime. Former leaders of the Bank have had to deal with it as well, usually by working around it as best they could. I don’t see any evidence that Wolfowitz has been able to change this, and now no one there is willing to work with him. If that’s the case, he will be ineffective, and hurt the institution more than he is helping. Keeping him there will just reinforce America’s image as a bully.