Next Thing You Know They'll Send Non-Arabic Speaking Texans to Run the Embassy in Riyadh

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From the New York Daily News:

The three top jobs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Bush went to political cronies with no apparent experience coping with catastrophes, the Daily News has learned.

Further details here; bascially Numbers Two and Three are both political PR guys. My question is this: Is there some counter-intuitive defense for rewarding political hacks with important government jobs they're unqualified for? Is devising political propaganda the new "thinking outside the bureaucratic box"? Or is this, and all bipartisan patronage like it, precisely as irresponsible as it looks?