Verifying that the old "bad penny" theory still prevails within the Bush administration, Americans learned Thursday that Paul D. Wolfowitz has been given a new senior position at the Department of State.

Mr. Wolfowitz as deputy to one of the fathers of the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who himself seems to have disappeared from public view), was one of the administration's neoconservative hawks who never stopped trying to drag the United States into war with Iraq. He was exemplary, although not unique, in holding to this view in spite of whatever evidence existed that Iraq had neither weapons of mass destruction nor links to al-Qaida.

He left that job in 2005 to be chosen by President Bush as president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development -- the World Bank. Mr. Wolfowitz was dragged kicking and screaming from that post last year in the wake of a scandal in which he engineered a promotion and more generous salary for his significant other, Shaha Ali Riza, who was also employed at the bank.

From there he went to the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing Washington think tank. The problem for Mr. Wolfowitz at AEI was probably the pay. So now he will be going to the long-suffering Department of State to be chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, which deals with disarmament, nonproliferation and U.S. nuclear agreements, a job with significant responsibilities. Unfortunately, it does not require Senate confirmation.

Why, exactly, given Mr. Wolfowitz's undistinguished recent track record, is it necessary for him to be given a senior post on the taxpayers' payroll? Washington is at least in principle different from the city of Pittsburgh. Let Mr. Wolfowitz's conservative brothers support him with fees for speeches and other honoraria. He has done nothing to merit being given new governmental responsibilities.