The Appointee -- Tuesdays at Ten

After another season of the Donald's, The Apprentice, it occurs to me that the White House could learn a lot about vetting their appointments to all sorts of positions including the cabinet, supreme court, and lesser crowns like ambassadorships. They could simply create a 'reality' tv show and let the country help weed out the candidates.

The recent embarrassment over NY's Bernard Kerik to Homeland Security isn't the travesty that the press is making it out to be. It would have been worse, sure, if he had already started the job. So, ok, enthusiasm ran high already, and in the 2nd term things got a tad sloppy with new people playing it a little loose on background checks. I don't think that 'bad' day [the day Kerik's sordid past hit the fan] begins to compare with the 'best' day in Baghdad, so why are we giving it so much newsprint? I don't think President Bush or Rudy G. should keep beating themselves up over it. Let it go already!

We can learn something from this, though.

We learned from the Clinton administration that nearly nobody is qualified to be Attorney General of the U.S. Save for missing a law degree, I used to think I could volunteer -- I never 'smoked' you know what (let alone had the inhalation issue to contend with), didn't have that nasty nanny-gate problem, but then, ooops, nevermind. . . forgot about dear Vera, the short-term house cleaner a life-time ago. She didn't want to report her income to the government and I didn't want to twist her arm about it so I didn't pay the 'employer's' part of the social security either. There I go, disqualifying myself from Attorney General. That was just one of Kerik's transgressions.

But just imagine -- if we had 100,000 candidates for the cabinet secretary of Homeland Security [The Apprentice gets 1 million applications; I'm assuming not nearly as many people would want this job as working for the Trumpster], and taking all sorts of prequalifications into account,we narrowed the search to 20.

Then, what if we planned a 20-week television program based on weeding out the undesirable candidates each week, pitting them against each other one by one, while we, the audience, learn more and more about them, their character, grace-under-fire pressure, and you know, whether they floss -- important stuff.

I think we'd have a hit all right. And we'd probably be no worse for the wear. We might even have a darn good Appointee for the position of whatever post we were trying to fill -- just name it -- the process works for any of them in the federal government.

Sure, we would still have the CIA and FBI clearances, newspaper leaks, old lovers' tapes discovered [a la Clinton], and quirks like practicing surgery on 'rescued' cats [see Sen. Frist online articles] but we would have a better chance of airing our dirty laundry in advance.

See, it's not that we couldn't wear dirty socks a 2nd day, but sometimes, well, you know. . .you just want to sniff them to be real sure.