Another Take On Kerik

James Joyner and Phil Carter team up to make the case for Bernard Kerik. Their argument hinges on a point I'd totally overlooked until I found it popping up as the "to be sure" graf in Fred Kaplan's otherwise very negative Slate piece. The Joyner/Carter point is that Kerik, as a former big city police chief, will have the proper urban orientation of a homeland security czar. Quoth Carter:

It is the second job of the DHS chief that Kerik is prepared for: national homeland security czar. Under the DHS's enabling statute, the secretary serves as the president's chief adviser and the nation's lead official on homeland security. DHS sets national policy on everything from the threat level (the infamous DHS color chart) to container inspections at U.S. ports and pushes programs at the state and local level, such as chemical and biological defense training for first responders.

That could be right and, as I say, I overlooked it before. But I'm a bit skeptical. Bush hasn't historically let cabinet secretaries besides Don Rumsfeld act as real policymakers. Instead they've been administrators of the agencies they oversee and public spokespeople for Bush's policies. Even the pro-Kerik Carter article expresses some skepticism about Kerik qua administrator, which is the one job we're sure he'll do. The job Caarter thinks he'll do well is a job he probably won't even get the chance to do at all. But I'll concede that, in principle at least, I could be proven wrong. Rumsfeld, as I've said, has been a real policymaker, so it's at last possible that Kerik could be as well. But I think I'll probably be proven right.

The other thing, of course, is that it seems to me that the most important job in the odd DHS jumble (curse Bush for having stolen the Democrats' worst idea and done nothing with their better ones) is the border security one and not the "first responders" post-attack stuff. There's no reason at all to think that Kerik will do this well. Note also, as Kaplan does, that there's actually another NYC Police Commissioner who has border control and other relevant experience, along with whatever virtues Carter thinks he sees in Kerik.