"Politics," most broadly defined, can be said to affect almost any interaction between people (or others -- Jane Goodall documented a form of politics that seems to fit this definition among chimpanzees). In our government, however, we try to keep "politics" of a certain stripe -- which is to say, partisanship -- to a minimum in the hope of effective governance. And then you hear things like the comments in this post coming from a government official.
In this case, while the US Attorneys are "political" appointees, one hopes that their tenure is marked by a non-partisan approach to their job. One also hopes that, if they are doing their jobs, they will be left alone except to have all the support they need from the powers that be.
The idea that the US Attorney purge is one arm of the administration's strategy for controlling the 2008 elections is now becoming current on the internet. I wish I could say I was surprised.
Update:
Relevant to that last comment, Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake makes this point:
Frankly, it is no wonder that Kyle Sampson did not recognize a distinction between politicization and performance assessments, because the Bush Administration makes no distinction other than "helpful to our agenda or not." And their agenda, as driven by Rove's insatiable appetite for collecting power chits is as follows: win at any cost. That the cost is the taint of our democracy and the undermining of the rule of law is apparently of no consequence, and that is profoundly disturbing — and an argument for more and more Congressional oversight, if I ever saw one.
It's wrong no matter who's doing it. This is just a lesson in what happens when one party controls the entire government. Fortunately, most people in this country have some idea of what the country really is about, which gives us a chance to scuttle the ones that don't.
(Crossposted at Politics.Wikia.)
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