In regards to the VA scandal, Jay Carney said, “The first time the President heard about it was in the papers.”
We’ve only heard this, oh, about five times. It’s his answer to everything. “I didn’t know nuthin’”. He takes zero responsibility for what goes on in his administration.
To be clear, the problems with the VA predate his administration. But they continued to get worse, and it was widely reported in the news that they continued to get worse. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if they get much worse, people were going to start dying. Yet the President seems to have left the VA on autopilot. Worse, Gen. Shinseki seems to have left the VA on autopilot. The guy under him is the guy who was the person dealing with the issue, and he wasn’t doing so well at it, so he resigned before Shinseki did. This is an interesting leadership style, where you know a department has serious problems, but you don’t follow up to find out if things are getting better.
Bureaucracies will not do their jobs unless constantly monitored. Just as with businesses, self-regulation does not work. This has to be the fifth or sixth time that the President has been faced with major failures in the bureaucracy, yet I still see no sign that he’s taking any action other than to cover his own ass. As the President, the guy elected to head the executive branch of the government, he should be devoting major time to bringing the bureaucracy to heel. He knows it’s broken. So what’s his plan? Oh yeah, make sure that whatever happens over the next 2 1/2 years, he doesn’t get blamed for it. Which means that his people will continue to not tell him anything.