Card Resigns

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has resigned. Joshua Bolten, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, will take his place.

Bush described his new chief of staff as a creative thinker and a strong advocate for accountability and effective management in the federal government.

"He is a man of candor and humor and directness, who is comfortable with responsibility and knows how to lead," Bush said.

Wev, wev, and more wev. If Bolten was genuinely a “strong advocate for accountability and effective management in the federal government,” the last job he’d take is Chief of Staff for Bush.

More about Bolten from Slate, Nov. 2001 (via Mahablog):

Josh Bolten is the White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy. That makes him the president’s chief domestic policy adviser, and since Sept. 11 he has headed the White House’s new “domestic consequences group” that has developed post-attack legislation such as the airline bailout and the stimulus package. The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza calls him “increasingly powerful” and “the anonymous fourth man in the inner circle of Bush’s staff” (after Andy Card, Karl Rove, and Karen Hughes). U.S. News says he has emerged after the terrorist attacks as Bush’s “chief economic architect,” and the Washington Post says Bolten “has a quiet hand in all domestic policy and international economic policy.”

During the 2000 campaign, Bolten was Bush’s policy director, and during the Florida recount he was a top lieutenant to James Baker. He worked as a lawyer in the Reagan administration’s State Department, and he served as a staff attorney for the Senate Finance Committee from 1985 to 1989. In the first Bush administration, he worked as general counsel for the U.S. trade representative and as the White House’s deputy assistant for legislative affairs.

Also from FDL, Bolten has been with Bush since Texas and is cozy with Rove.

So, in other words, Enter the Crony. Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.