Andrew Zajac
Here’s a switch. A press release in which a high-ranking Bush Administration official claims he’ not leaving.
FEMA Administrator David Paulison this afternoon put out a strongly worded declaration that, contrary to media reports, he’s not not going anywhere.
That passes for news in the last year of a lame duck presidency generously sprinkled with top level boards and commissions lacking enough members for quorums and by a rush for the exits among senior officials. (See yesterday’s announced departure of embattled HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson.)
Moving on is a fact of transitions, he said, but not imminent.
“It is a fact that I serve President Bush, and therefore my service will end when we move into the next administration,” he said. “However, I can assure you that this announcement is not imminent. I have no job offers and have no plans to leave FEMA at this time.”
(FEMA Administrator David Paulison at a Missouri flooding-disaster area in March. AP Photo by Tom Gannam) Here’s Paulison’s full statement:
Note two bureaucratic devices in Paulison’s announcement and their plain English meaning:
“Let me be clear” — the verbal equivalent of pounding the table. Maybe he really means it.
“I have no plans to leave at this time.” But tomorrow may be a different story.
So maybe he is leaving after all.