National Journal reporter Shane Harris notes that the White House have appointed a former bottom rung White House staffer to an important position in the Department of Homeland Security.

Douglas L. Hoelscher is the new executive director of the Homeland Security Advisory Committees and the “primary representative” of department Secretary Michael Chertoff in dealing with more than 20 advisory boards. Among them is the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which includes such high-powered figures as Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Lockheed Chairman Norman Augustine, and former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger.

The story includes the charming revelation that “in a personal profile that Hoelscher created for the Web site Friendster.com, he … listed William Bennett’s The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals among his favorite books and wrote, “I’m usually fairly quiet in a group setting — I am not a talker but a pretty good listener.”"

Comforting, isn’t it? But wait, there’s more.

Hoelscher launched his political career after graduating from the University of Iowa in 1999. During the 2000 campaign, he worked for Wisconsin’s Republican Party, campaign finance records show. In 2001, he was a political coordinator in the White House Office of Political Affairs, which was run by Ken Mehlman, who was Bush’s Midwest regional political director in the 2000 campaign and is now the Republican National Committee chairman. (Mehlman didn’t respond to an interview request.)

In 2004, Hoelscher worked for the RNC. The following year he became Homeland Security’s White House liaison, “obtaining information from the department,” said Joanna Gonzalez, a department spokeswoman. During Katrina, he helped deploy volunteers from the department to the Gulf Coast, she said. The congressional report on Katrina noted that some of those employees had trouble making it to the region because of departmental miscommunications.

Hoelscher also “made sure [that department political appointees] were all placed in the office where they were happiest and … fit best,” Gonzalez said.

You have to hand it to Mehlman and the White House: once they choose a course, they stick with it. Come hell or high water, and quite probably both in this instance, they’re determined to find the best connected and least qualified candidate for a job. At least the president doesn’t expect anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do.

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