An inflammatory topic line, to be sure. No matter, it seems to be true of whichever administration you like to bash, democratic or republican. The latest wacky goings-on in Washington:
April 22: EPA Chief Christie Whitman announces that her boss won’t push for oil drilling in the arctic refuge.
April 23: Big sighs of releif from the Sierra Club & most of the Democratic leadership, with republicans taunting “See? our guy’s not so bad!” Democrats counter with “Dirty trick! He just flip-flopped so he could look better in the recent bad light of his anti-environmental policies!”
April 24: Bush advisers say that Whitman mis-spoke, and the Administration still has every intention to push for drilling.
Whoopsie! Gee, does the cabinet even talk to the administration? Why is it so hard for the country’s CEO to be on the same page as his department managers (to use a business analogy, if I may). If any private sector company operated like that, you can be pretty sure it wouldn’t last very long. Or at least they would have some seriously confused employees and pissed-off customers.
And once more, this is not a dig specifically at Bush because you can probably come up with numerous examples of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in any administration. Checking out the nutty parade that was the Reagan years, we find many many examples of the president issuing corrections on statements made just days before by his advisors, or the advisors nervously retracting some remark that the president made:
Why can’t any given administration come up with a position and tell the cabinet what it is? If the cabinet isn’t 100% certain what the boss’s position is, then perhaps they should check with him before making policy statements to major news reporting agencies.
Is it necessary to maintain a certain minimum level of confusion so that no single person can be held accountable for what s/he says? Is it a safety net to gaurd against incompetence? I am left with a constant lingering feeling that my government just can’t get its act together. This kind of shoddy executive mismanagement doesn’t make anybody feel good, no matter what side you’re on or what your rhetoric is.
[sub]In the interest of equal time, my conservative friends may now chime in with numerous examples of confusion between Clinton & his cabinet, but it’ll only further support the premise of the OP.[/sub]