I can’t wait for the day when stories like this drive Hugh Hewitt into paroxysms of righteous outrage again.

Edgar A. Domenech says he thought Justice Department officials would welcome information about mismanagement at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Instead, the 23-year ATF veteran says, Justice officials ignored his complaints and later retaliated against him by demoting him, denying him a bonus and attempting to give him a poor job review.

And again and again. I emphasize this kind of story because there really is a best practices for running a functional government. People do a more competent job under the threat of transparency and adversarial oversight. Take that away and you eliminate the disincentive for slack, graft and letting mistakes of every magnitude slide uncorrected. To the degree that whistleblowers are actively protected, shitty managers and government programs that fail for whatever reason can be exposed and corrected. Strict ethics rules enforced by zealous and independent oversight keep away the stink that almost always goes along with political power. If these things disappear it hardly matters who is in charge; shitty management will follow like water flows downhill. Tax money will disappear down unaccountable holes, important programs will stop working. National security will be less secure. Idiots who can’t do their job will be appointed to important positions. Said idiots, justifiably fearing exposure of their crappy management, inevitably commit increasingly stupid mistakes in an effort to cover up earlier mistakes.

The country works better under Democrats because as a whole they have a better grip on best practices. That’s it. If you think I’m wrong, I encourage you to revisit the unlivable hell that was the Eisenhower administration. Despite their loopy policy agenda Republican leadership doesn’t have to run the country into the ground, it’s just a historical accident that Republican presidents since Eisenhower have had a crappy notion of how to make government work. Bushies just represent the ultimate defeat of competence after a decades-long, losing battle with ideological purity.

I wonder whether a shamed and defeated GOP can defy the purity trolls in their the base and give some capable young John Cole types a chance to build a national party again. Sounds tough, after all first they’ll have to stop driving those guys to the Democrats, but it’s either that or try taking power back by some means other than electoral politics.