‘Reexamination’: Another Word for ‘Kiss Your Nomination Goodbye’

Here’s how you know your Cabinet nomination is in trouble: When the Bush people say that they are “reexamining statements” you made to them and they are “reviewing the time frame” of your statements. There’s a technical political term for such reexamination and review.

The term is: Goodbye.

And so goodbye, Linda Chavez. I’m sure it’s all a terrible misunderstanding. I’m sure you had no intention of keeping an illegal alien as a maid. I’m sure you welcomed her into your house with sincere charity and concern for her welfare, and every once in a while, just for a joke, you said, “Hey, Marta, as long as you’re in the kitchen, how about fixing tortillas for 12?” I believe you that you never said she was your “nanny.” What you said was it’s “uncanny” how much you and your live-in friend had in common: She liked to clean your house, and you liked her to clean your house.

Still, Linda, you had to go.

It’s a bruising process, isn’t it? You called yourself a victim of Washington’s “game of search and destroy . . . the politics of personal destruction.” You even trotted out a bunch of immigrants who said you were a swell gal with a big heart.

Of course, there was a way to avoid this public nastiness: You could have told the truth the first time. To me, that comes under the heading of “Domestic Stuff That’s Hard to Forget”: My dog’s name; what kind of car I drive; I’ve got an illegal alien living in my house doing “chores.”

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I can see why George W. Bush (official administration motto: “It’s Four Years, Right?”) wanted Chavez as secretary of Labor. Obviously, Chavez is in favor of labor--as long as she doesn’t have to do it, or pay minimum wage for it.

I love the fact that Bush is being given credit for quickly dumping Chavez. Like he even knew who she was. Oh, please. When Chavez’s name was first brought up, Bush said, “The grape guy?”

So Chavez is gone. But John Ashcroft, who believes in fire and brimstone, and Gale Norton, who’ll live with fire and brimstone if it’s the quickest way to blast the oil out of Alaska, still remain. Who’s next, Ted Kaczynski for postmaster general?

I may have erred when I called Bush dumb. He’s not dumb, he’s just not paying attention. He thinks he won!

And get a load of this: Norton, the Interior choice, kind of wishes the South had won the Civil War. Which I guess might be overlooked if you’re up for night manager at Joe Bob’s Dixie Bar-B-Q and Truck Wash. But it raises all sorts of nasty issues at the federal level. I know, she says it’s all about states’ rights, but I sure would like to be in the room when she explains that to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

At least Norton doesn’t have that tiresome, stereotypically negative view of big business as money-grubbing, land-raping slime bags. Norton wouldn’t be a stick-in-the-mud when it came to helping promote American energy independence.

Let’s say someone thought there might be oil in the Everglades because one night, sitting around in those inflatable Miller Lite chairs watching “Temptation Island,” this guy’s cousin said, “Hey, there’s gotta be oil in the freakin’ Everglades, right?”

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Norton would give them a permit to drill for oil. And if a whole bunch of cousins had the same brainstorm, a whole bunch of permits and a whole bunch of drilling would ensue, leaving a 90-mile-wide greasy sludge pit where an ancient and irreplaceable ecological treasure once stood.

So, sure, who wouldn’t vote to confirm Gale “Anything Goes” Norton? She’ll let you strip-mine your own street! You can get behind the wheel of a big Caterpillar and roll right through your neighbor’s front porch. All you have to do is say you’re looking for bauxite or uranium or oil. There’s gotta be some oil here somewhere, right?