Eleven Months To Fix 38 Years

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin snipes at Obama's competency level.

Really, what have the Obami done well? Not the stimulus plan. Not crafting a popular and coherent health-care bill. And not instilling confidence that there are competent people who can, when bombarded with intelligence, put it together to prevent an attack or even craft a policy designed to extract information after an attack. But Bob Schieffer, not exactly a fire-breathing conservative, really laid into the Obami. The problem is not only competence but also trust. The Democrats are consumed with political spin even on national security. He notes that Janet Napolitano was getting hammered but explains that this is a symptom of a bigger issue:

But she was just following the modern bipartisan public relations template in this age of information management. First, play down the problem. Second, emphasize what did not go wrong. Assure us that those in charge are investigating, and most important, emphasize no one in any position of responsibility is at fault. It’s not lying. But it’s not exactly the whole truth, certainly not the whole story. All she left out was that part about asking us to respect the privacy of those involved. Oh, I’m sorry. I got the government spin mixed up with the Tiger spin. Here is the difference. Tiger can hire as many people as he wants to make his excuses. It maydo him no good but it’s his money to spend as he wishes. When government officials insult us with spin they’re doing it on our dime, which is supposed to be used to operate the government, not to hold news conferences to tell us what a fine job people on the public payroll are doing. As we learned during Katrina, self-serving spin at the first sign of crisis does not help the situation. It makes it worse. Because it makes it harder to believe anything the government says. Real security is built on trust in government. That requires truth, which should be the beginning of government presentations, not the fallback position.

Yowser. Now that’s a narrative that should concern the Obami. Unfortunately, one wonders if they know what to do with a problem not solvable by spin and attack-dog tactics. At some point you really have to govern. Sadly, that is not their strong suit.

So, the problem is after 38 years of Americans not trusting in the Federal government, through Nixon's Watergate, Ford's pardon of Nixon, Carter's malaise and adventures in Iran, Reagan's "Government is the problem, not the solution", Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes" and the first Gulf War, Clinton Derangement Syndrome and resulting impeachment, and eight years of Dubya's rank hyper-partisanship 100% A-1 crack team of awesome dudes, Barack Obama has somehow still failed to instill in Americans full confidence in the federal government.

Right then.  Thanks for giving him eleven months on that, I'd hate to have seen you jump to idiotic conclusions about the nation's first minority President which might lead to questions about Obama being held to a different standard or anything.