(if I were) King of (the) Forest Posts

Whether those states are Iowa and New Hampshire or some others, equally small and compact, there is, notwithstanding the preferences expressed by Derrick Z. Jackson and the leaders of the Democratic party, a benefit to holding our first caucuses and primaries in states that are neither so large as to prevent effective personal politics nor so dominated by a single large media market as to require enormous sums of money even to begin a campaign….

…For your consideration, I would submit that such a move would have made it impossible for some relatively unknown and underfunded but charming southern governor — say someone like Bill Clinton — to have emerged as a serious candidate. And I submit it would likely have prevented some brand-name candidate anointed and bankrolled by the political party establishment — say someone like George W. Bush — from having to confront any serious challenge or insurrection by the dissatisfied centrists who almost made John McCain the candidate in his place.

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the supposedly apolitical part of the Federal government — the civil servants who run the bulk of things — have a general antipathy to a conservative political agenda that envisions a much more constrained Federal power. And, so, I don’t think it’s unfair to expect that the appointees of a conservative president, who must overcome that antipathy if they are to move their agenda forward, will share that conservative ideological bent.

That is neither cronyism nor particularly partisan. It is merely a necessity created by the climate in which they must work.