Is George W. Bush reverting to type and handing the remaining two years of a failed family enterprise — the presidency — to his father?

With the Democratic sweep in Congress, Bush’s domestic agenda has gone from comatose to dead; his sole remaining domain is foreign policy and for several reasons I’m not remotely convinced he’s ready to surrender it to his father. But the nominations of Robert Gates to head the defense department and David Laufman as the Pentagon’s inspector general, along with James Baker’s high profile on Iraq, suggest that at the least Bush is once again looking to his father and his father’s friends to if not clean up the mess he’s made, at least obstruct any efforts to examine how big a mess it actually is and to hold him responsible for it.

Baker’s middle name may as well be “Bush family fixer.” Gates capped his government career as the Bush père CIA director. Laufman worked as a military and political analyst at the CIA from 1980 – 1984 — the same period as Gates was undertaking his efforts to transform the agency’s intelligence directorate into a more consumer-friendly operation — and served as a none too eager investigator on two Congressional committees looking into Bush-related shenanigans — the “October Surprise” inquiry into whether or not the Reagan-Bush campaign interfered with Jimmy Carter’s efforts to free the US embassy hostages in Iran, and the inquiry into the release of Bill Clinton’s passport details in the final weeks of the 1992 presidential campaign, an escapade in which Baker was involved. He now works as a prosecutor in Alberto Gonzales’ justice department and as inspector general would be responsible for deciding which investigations to refer to Gonzales for prosecution.

Laufman’s nomination has been tied up in the Senate by Carl Levin, who will become the armed services committee chairman when the new Congress convenes in January. Levin says he is he concerned about Laufman’s qualifications for the job and his ability and willingness to conduct fully independent inquiries.

The Gates nomination should magnify Levin’s concerns about Laufman’s independence. Laufman had no direct connection to outgoing defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but he does have connections with Gates through his CIA position during Gates’s tenure and through his involvement in the “October Surprise” investigation; Gates was among those alleged to have participated in the pre-election negotiations with Iran in 1980.

As the Pentagon’s inspector general, Laufman would have oversight of the ongoing investigation into the Pentagon’s handling of pre-war Iraq intelligence — one of Levin’s primary interests — and of the multiple fraud and abuse investigations targeting contracts for services during the war, including some awarded to Dick Cheney’s corporate benefactor, Halliburton, and its KBR subsidiary.

Regardless which Bush Gates is expected to serve, there’s no doubt that he’s a family factotum. If he’s answering to the younger Bush, his job is to help figure out a way to hold the line on Iraq and hold the Army together long enough to allow the president to leave town without having admitted defeat. In the worst case his CIA ties, his reputation for slanting intelligence to suit his political masters and his familiarity with Iran raise the possibility that he’s there to help suss out the prospects for topping the Iraq debacle with an attack on Iran.

If he’s there on behalf of the elder Bush, his job is to soothe ruffled feathers and help figure out a way to hold the Army together until the Baker-led cavalry arrives with Plan B, with his CIA connections and intelligence-slanting skills and familiarity with Iran aimed at forestalling an attack on that country and perhaps promoting some back-channel military cooperation between Iran and the US with respect to Iraq.

No matter which Bush is in charge, Gates won’t be tasked with expediting congressional investigations into corruption and intelligence-fixing at the Pentagon which threaten to do lasting damage to Republicans and their corporate benefactors. And the eventual inspector general at the Pentagon, whether Laufman or someone else, will be expected to fend off a pack of House Democrats baying at his heels along with Levin and the long-frustrated Jay Rockefeller at the Senate intelligence committee.

Incoming House government reform committee chairman Henry Waxman says his toughest initial task as chairman will be deciding where to focus the committee’s investigatory efforts because so many areas have gone without oversight during the past six years, but contract fraud and abuse at the Pentagon have been a particular interest of his and, as the Duke Cunningham case illustrates, it’s an area in which a number of congressional Republicans and their corporate benefactors are at risk.

Laufman was nominated in June of this year. Whether it’s a happy coincidence that Gates will be the Pentagon boss if Laufman is confirmed — or more likely, benefits from a recess appointment over the December break — or whether Gates’s nomination was already in the offing, the Bush’s surely stand to benefit from their presence: Gates has already demonstrated his ability to obstruct investigations, and Laufman his to avoid conducting them. In an administration characterized by corruption and greed, the two should keep quite busy.

Major thanks to smintheus for the alert on Laufman’s nomination

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