Yeah but the news cycle moves even faster. Esquire has published an email by DiIulio where he laid out his opinions-- not reporters notes but DiIulio's own extended email. It's deadly. See http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2002/021202_mfe_diiulio_1.html
Despite praising Bush personally, it's devastating to the White House operation:
Here's a key excerpt:
"In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical, non-stop, 20-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but, on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking-discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue. [...] This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis-staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible."
All politics, no substance, all rightwing-- straight from a source to claim to love Bush.
-- Nathan Newman