Today's Daily Schadenfreude: Jeb! Bush and his "midnight appointees"

Looks like there's a new sheriff in Tallahassee after all.

I've been skeptical of the ability of Gov. Crist to overcome the GOP money machine and be his own man, but to his credit, he appears to be doing so, at least at the outset:

One week after taking office, Gov. Charlie Crist Wednesday withdrew the names of 283 members of various state boards and panels who had been appointed by Republican predecessor Jeb Bush but who had not yet been confirmed by the Senate.

Pulled were a dozen names from the Space Florida board of directors, six from the Board of Medicine, one from the Palm Beach Community College board, three from the Pilotage Rate Review Board and two from the Barbers' Board.

The highest-profile jobs affected: two of Bush's choices for the state Board of Education, which oversees public schools, and two for the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities.

"I want to honor the will of the people," Crist said. "We had an election. And every governor that I can research in recent memory has done this. And the reason, I think, is pretty obvious. People made a choice, they'd like a fresh start and some new blood, and we're going to give it to them."

He said some of the names yanked might be reappointed but that most would be fresh faces of his own choosing.

Two of the most odious names withdrawn were a couple of Jeb!'s biggest political cronies, T. Willard Fair and F. Phillip Handy.

One top administration official said privately that Crist also had been troubled by what the official called the "arrogance" of T. Willard Fair and Phil Handy.

"I think there is some justice in this world," said Jim Warford, the former K-12 schools chancellor who was forced from his job after questioning the validity of Bush's school grading system. "I applaud our new governor."

Fair and Handy, both loyal political supporters of Bush, were seen as the best chance Bush had of maintaining influence over the state's education system after his departure.

Just last month, Fair said to Jeb!, when Fair was elected chairman of the Board of Education (now rescinded), "In my judgment, there is no greater person on this Earth than you. I love you." That's good enough for me to enjoy the withdrawal of his appointment. Meanwhile, it seems the ironic attempt by Jeb! to extend the term of Handy, who was the champion of the "Eight is Enough" term limit measure, has failed, deliciously.

Jeb! Bush essentially gutted the quality of K-12 education in Florida by introducing and maintaining the FCAT. He also created literally hundreds of new gubernatorially-appointed posts in higher education, thereby reducing oversight over higher education by decentralizing and politicizing the governance of the state's 28 community colleges and 11 universities. Anything that can be done to reduce or eliminate Jeb!'s influence over education is, in my opinion, a good thing.

Admittedly, it's a common practice in Florida for governors to rescind the later, unconfirmed appointments* of their predecessors. However, in comparison to Jeb!'s rescission of about 170 of Democratic governor Lawton Chiles' appointees in 1999, Crist's bold move of taking away more than half again as many from a predecessor of his own party is notable, if not historic.

So, to the 283 disappointed Bushies in Florida this morning, I revel in your misfortune! Congratulations -- today's Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!

* I call them "midnight appointments" in the title in deference to the incident when Thomas Jefferson refused to transmit to Congress the names of the "midnight judges" appointed by John Adams just before leaving the presidency in 1801. This controversy was the genesis of the seminal U.S. Supreme Court opinion written by Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison.

There's your history lesson for today.