Rod Paige

Like all of you, I'm sad that the Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, is resigning. The architect of No Child Left Behind, Paige was the superintendent of education in Houston before joining the Bush cabinet. In Houston he revolutionized the school system, drastically cutting dropout rates while raising test scores. It came out earlier this year that the reason this happened is that the Houston school district simply made up the numbers.

Even though he made up his credentials, led the Houston school system into systematic fraud to look good to the government, and was only in the cabinet because he's one of the dozen black Republicans in the nation, he might be less incompetent than most other Bush appointees. At least his failings can be traced to lies instead of idiocy. Somehow I prefer that.