What's going on in the White House? Or It's competence, stupid. [View all]

[bklyncowgirl]

As someone who believes that government can be a force for good, someone who voted twice for, who donated to and worked for Barak Obama, and wants him to succeed I am becoming increasingly disturbed by what seems to be sheer incompetence on the part of his administration, which makes me think, unfortunately, that our President, who is a man with great rhetorical gifts and a humane and decent vision of where this country should be is a lousy manager.

Mind you, it's not his job to call the White House's maintenance department to fix the door alarm. It is his job to appoint a someone whose job it is to make sure that the head of White House Operations makes sure that all of this very expensive equipment is in prime working order, that Secret Service agents are on duty when and where they're supposed to be and most importantly, to tell the president things that he is not going to want to hear.

If it was just this, I wouldn't be as concerned but we've seen one thing after another go wrong. The fact that the President was totally blindsided by the fact that his greatest achievement, the Affordable Care Act was about to be turned into a national joke by a malfunctioning website is more evidence that something is seriously wrong in the White House. The fact that the President was completely blindsided by Isis, and seemed to have no clue that going golfing right after responding to the beheading of an American journalist might be fodder for the right wing.

My take on this is that any President needs someone at his side who has the management skills and the willingness to bust heads if he or she has to in order to get the White House on track so that the chief executive is free to concentrate on the big picture. Rahm Emanuel, as much as I disliked his politics, served this purpose in his first term. Since then, things have gone downhill.

I realize that many people will not like what I'm saying, but the truth is that Democrats, the party which believes that government can be a force for good, have got to deliver on that promise. I value good progressive ideas but ideas are not enough if you are not able to implement them well and make them work efficiently and within budget. Yes, the ACA was fixed, kind of sort of, although all too many people are completely unaware of that fact. "Good enough for government work" just doesn't cut it any more.