My few readers will guess that I was thinking of blackwhite in the context of the Bush administration.

One of their claims in their clearly flailing attack on Richard Clarke is that he was a Clinton administration official and hence a partisan Democrat. The basis for this claim is that Clarke was a civil servant not a political appointee. Thus partisan really means not partisan enough to work only for Republicans. Up is down.

Boring bit below. Now it is clearly absurd to say Richard Clarke is a partisan Democrat. He claims that he was registered as a Republican in 2000. This is a matter of public record. The claim is based partly on the fact that he worked for one Democratic president as well as 3 Republican presidents. It is also based on the fact that he is a friend of Rand Beers who
is John Kerry's coordinator for national security and homeland security issues. So how did Clarke get to know Beers ? Beers too was a civil servant working for the Bush administration who resigned as a top counterterrorism official at the National Security Council after the invasion of Iraq .

In other words, the Bush administration defence against the view of a non partisan expert who is convinced that Bush should not be president is to note that he is a friend of another formerly non poartisan expert who is convinced that Bush should not be president.

The White house view that everyone who is familiar with the Bush white house and is not a Republican operative is against them might be correct, but it seems unwise for them to stress it.