Laura Rozen asks the obvious question. I'd really like to know the answer. The first obvious disqualification is that Thiessen was integral to the team of war criminals in the last administration that tore up the Geneva Conventions and authorized torture throughout every theater of war.
It cannot be about writing talent - there are a few thousand people on the right more talented than this third-rater. It cannot be intellect: anyone with even a passing knowledge of just war theory can see he knows nothing about it. It cannot be about representing the Bush administration: the WaPo already has an intellectually mediocre Bush speech-writer on its op-ed page, Mark Gerson.
Dan Froomkin, whom they fired, had more talent and gumption and reporting skills in his little finger than this prep school product who spent his early years as speech-writer and "senior policy advisor" working for Jesse Helms. His entire career has been in the right-wing welfare state, beginning with the lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly.
I really cannot fathom it. Ask Fred Hiatt, the neoconservative fanatic who runs the page and ran 27 editorials urging war against Iraq. His email is here.