AREN'T JEWISH BANKERS SUPPOSED TO RUN THE WORLD?:

A ‘Second Chance’ at Career Goes Sour (STEVEN R. WEISMAN, 5/18/07, NY Times)

Paul D. Wolfowitz was ready to move on from the Pentagon in early 2005. He had been thwarted in his effort to become defense secretary or national security adviser. And the war in Iraq had deteriorated. So when the World Bank presidency came open, he jumped at the opportunity.

It offered him a “second chance” to redeem his reputation and realize his ambitions, says a friend who has known him for decades.

Months later, another friend ran into the new bank president and asked how he was enjoying the job. Mr. Wolfowitz unleashed a torrent of bitter complaints about the bank’s bureaucracy, saying it was the worst he had ever seen — worse than at the Pentagon.

Now, as friends and critics sort through the wreckage of Mr. Wolfowitz’s bank career, they wonder if it was doomed from the outset. Supporters say he arrived at the bank, a citadel of liberalism, from a four-year stint at the Pentagon, where he was an early champion of going to war with Iraq and left bearing its stigma. He was determined to shake up the status quo by rooting out what he saw as corruption and waste, and demanding measurable results from the bank’s many aid programs.

“The bank leadership didn’t like Paul challenging their assumptions,” said Robert B. Holland III, a Texas businessman who represented the Bush administration on the bank board until last year. “They have all been there a long time, and they are used to promoting each other’s interests and scratching each other’s back.”

Represented the Bush administration? Not America?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 18, 2007 8:57 AM