What a great magazine the New Yorker is. If you have time (it is long), read this fascinating article on stovepiping in the Bush administration.

Author Seymour M. Hersh suggests that by fast-tracking analysis and information to the top, the administration created structures that bypassed standard vetting procedures, and encouraged information that reinforced conventional wisdom.

What surprises me is that this happened with the Bush administration. It is stacked top to bottom with people from big business. Graduates of Harvard and Yale business schools. People who, surely, have studied how to create effective reporting hierarchies, ones that encourage, not suppress, dissenting ideas that may be correct.

Love or hate the Clinton administration, but you have to see contrast. The Clintons arranged debating societies, where experts presented the pros and cons of issues. Compared to the Bush cabinet, marching in lock step toward deficit and war, suppressing debate, I don't know what these captains of industry are thinking.