Admin Brain Drain: The American Spectator examines the degree of lameness of Bush’s lame-duck administration and the unlikelihood of the prez achieving either of his pet proposals: reforming Social Security and making the tax cuts for the rich permament.

“You run down the list of things we thought we could accomplish and you have to wonder what we thought we were thinking,” says a Bush Administration member who joined on in 2001. “You get the impression that we’re more than listless. We’re sunk.”

Perhaps more significant are rumors of longtime Bushies who are looking to jump ship, but are finding few opportunities in the private sector. Probably because their predecessors got the good jobs:

“What happened was that some of the best people who were working in the Administration during the first term, but who weren’t necessarily Bush campaign members or weren’t particularly close to the White House, jumped when they saw opportunities being filled by under-qualified but more politically connected people,” says a current Administration senior staffer in a Cabinet department. “In this department we lost three quarters of the people who should have been encouraged to stay, and most of them left simply because they had received no indication they would be considered for better or different opportunities. And many of these folks would have stayed.”

Looks like Bush’s team is suffering the same problem as his political vision — no depth.