2013
I’m going to take the high road here. Looking at the quotes below (from a WSJ editorial 12-7-13) one can conclude the President is passing the buck again for political cover or that he simply does not have a clue about managing anything. I’m not sure which is worse, but at least the latter is an honest fault not limited to politicians. It’s just that their incompetence affects a whole country and sometimes beyond. Mr Obama does not have a clue.
Big, outdated, poorly designed agencies, yup … Plus people at various levels running them who know with certainty they will not be held accountable. If you look at the performance reports in these agencies you find extremely high levels of superior performance evaluations.
No president is going to change the federal bureaucracy overnight or even in a few years, but that is no excuse for lack of close oversight and management. Plus, knowing the state of government administration, would you add more to the complex, inefficient mix and if you did, wouldn’t you pay especially close attention to how things were running? That’s just common sense, unless all you care about is your ideology being advanced; working effectively of not.
Mr Obama could not reasonably be expected to oversee all this himself, but someone on his staff could and certainly his Secretary of HHS could and should. Then again, Mr Obama and Ms Sebelius haven’t met face to face in years. What the heck is wrong with this picture?
If you were Mr Obama and people on your staff embarrassed you in a major way, undermined your credibility and virtually threatened your legacy, what would you do? Well, so far Mr Obama is apparently content to merely shift the blame to the faceless bureaucracy.
That tells you a great deal about the person running our Country.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama dropped by American University for a heart to heart with Chris Matthews, and the MSNBC host wondered who in the executive branch is responsible for the botched health-care rollout. Mr. Obama listed a few impersonal culprits including “cynicism,” “Washington gridlock” and “the management of government,” but he then drifted into another classic.
“The challenge, I think, that we have going forward is not so much my personal management style or particular issues around White House organization,” he said. “It actually has to do with what I referred to earlier, which is we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly. . . . The White House is just a tiny part of what is a huge, widespread organization with increasingly complex tasks in a complex world.”
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
IT’S THE REPUBLICANS THAT DON’T HAVE A CLUE, MR. QUINN, AND YOU UNDERSTAND THAT IN NOVERMBER OF 2014!
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So, does that mean you see no problem in the way this implementation was handled from the top on down?
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Seems to me it has been about the same as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare part D so far
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Only Part D is a close example and those problems were quite different.
Dick
Richard D Quinn
Blog http://www.quinnscommentary.com Twitter @quinnscomments
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Forgot to mention that the progress is being made in spite of nearly every Republican Congress in both houses and about 34 Republican governors fighting to attempt to make the law fail and deny citizens affordable healthcare coverage – not bad considering the opposition.
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Wilson, you are a thinking person, you know that the website implementation incompetence had nothing to do with Republican opposition.
Plus you express the consistent inclination of liberals to look at half a loaf with a naive view. The ACA in terms of exchanges affects a small segment of America. If you look at exchange prices, I’m not sure you would consider them affordable, except perhaps very low income who receive large tax credits. Is that how we define “affordable?” Merely shifting costs to someone else.
In the meantime over 150 million Americans are in employer plans with costs going higher in part by Obamacare mandates.
But the best example is Massachusetts. Yes, over 95% have coverage, but affordable, not so much. It is the most expensive state in the union when it comes to health care spending and last year they passed a law trying to limit what providers spend on healthcare. Where do you think that leads?
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You know, one of President Obama’s heroes, he mentioned it again in the same interview, was FDR, and then he mentioned Lyndon Johnson in the same breadth – that accomplishing great things means you need majorities in both houses and the white house. He then, as is his tradition, asserted that Reagan also had the same advantage in implementing his agends.
Of course, he has no understanding of Reagan. I did not like Reagan, but it was easy to vote against Carter and then Mondale.
Reagan never had a majority in the house of representatives.
How appropriate that this appears on December 7th. Next, perhaps, we will hear President Obama apologize to the Japanese for using the atomic bomb.
Who of you voted for this guy? Why did you vote for this guy? Did you take even 10 seconds to look at the legislation this guy supported/cosponsored during the years he was in the Senate (Lilly Ledbetter, Cardcheck, Comparative Worth, etc.)?
It is so obvious he never had any experience in an executive role in his life … and now, after five years, it really shows.
Perhaps he never knew of the screw ups in foreign policy, at the state department, at the border, in implementing PPACA, but if he didn’t, all it means is that he is even less competent to run the executive branch than if he had known, and ignored or covered up those items.
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well put …..he is very competent ,however, at campaigning and fund raising (please tell me why its ok for him to travel these United States on Air Force One to raise money for the Democratic party on our dime?)… and seems to be able to navigate some of the best golf courses in the country as he has racked up nearly 150 golf outings since he assumed office! We know of this from reports by his/ media sycophants who follow him around looking for morsels of wisdom from the great one.
As success breeds success so does incompetence and apathy breed more incompetence and apathy. Its all about self promotion, the cause and the party and not “governing responsibly”.
I could perhaps stomach his human frailties (none of us are perfect) if it were not wrapped in a cloak of hypocrisy and the well documented fact that he is an inveterate liar who sees himself as a savior of the poor and down trodden. Nothing can be further from the truth as he lives and reigns as a power hungry, dictator king. What a phoney…..and power monger. Take a look at Machiavelli’s” The Prince “and draw your own conclusions.
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His rhetoric hasn’t changed in 5+ years. He doesn’t hold anyone accountable, so why should these people worry. By my count, 27 people should have been fired over the various problems. Also 3-4 should have served jail time.
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