American incompetence in a world spinning out of control

nypost.com ^ | John Podheretz

[RoosterRedux]

An intruder made his way across the White House lawn and through the building almost to the Obama living quarters before being stopped by a Secret Service officer who was off duty: This chilling news is more than just a kind of melodramatic movie scenario come true.

Next to the military, the Secret Service is probably the most highly regarded institution within the executive branch. Or it was.

Now we learn its agents can’t catch a guy running across the White House lawn; can’t stop the guy at the front door; can’t get to him before he gets to the stairs that lead to the rooms where the president’s daughters sleep.

Which raises a simple question: If not the Secret Service, who? Whom can we trust to do a decent job in DC?

This fiasco — and the news, long covered up, that the White House was hit by several bullets back in 2011 — isn’t just a problem for the Secret Service and its present management.

This seems to crystallize a more general feeling that stretches from Washington to the far reaches of the globe — the feeling that things are spinning wildly out of control and there’s no one even minimally competent enough at the highest reaches of American power to calm the gathering storm.

[RoosterRedux]

It's a matter of Liberal Thought meets the Peter Principle.

The reason that government doesn't work yet business enterprises do is that when businesses fail to deliver, they die. Governments just keep on failing.

[DouglasKC]

You can bet the problems with the secret service in the white house START with the President, his staff and his family. How do they treat them? Dismissively? Arrogantly? Contemptuously? How long could someone be treated like that and not develop morale problems? How long before job performance would be affected?

[WayneS]

...the feeling that things are spinning wildly out of control and there’s no one even minimally competent enough at the highest reaches of American power to calm the gathering storm.

I don;t think it's just a 'feeling'.

[Don Corleone]

Now we learn its agents can’t catch a guy running across the White House lawn; can’t stop the guy at the front door;

After the FCC bans the REDSKINS maybe the SS can hire their defensive linemen to tackle the intruders./s

[theoldmarine]

The SS were busy on their smartphones hooking up with underage prostitutes for their next overseas trip!

[Blue Jays]

My thoughts are similar to yours.
It is difficult to remain motivated for work when one despises his or her boss.

Most of us have likely enjoyed awesome supervisors and would walk through fire if requested. They treated us well, cared about our lives, and worked through their management chains to ensure we would be recognized and gain more compensation. Why wouldn't we be devoted to a person who comports themselves that way?

Same thing with the Secret Service detail. They are likely very professional and stoic. Yet at the same time, when they have four bosses (a king, a queen, and two princesses...) that spit on them daily, have contempt for them, and consider the Secret Service a necessary evil...one can understand if perhaps the agents are vigilant 99% of the time instead of 100% of the time. They are likely weary of it all.

[GBA]

An intruder made his way across the White House lawn and through the building almost to the Obama living quarters before being stopped by a Secret Service officer who was off duty:

He wasn't a threat. Probably just an obama voter and supporter who wanted a little something from obama's stash. Nothing to worry about.

Besides, it's not like there's no surveillance and security.

They're busy reading TEA party email and sorting through conservative activists' and donors' tax info to bother with him.

Those are the real "terrorist threats", doncha know.

[Common Sense 101]

American incompetence in a world spinning out of control

It's NOT American incompetence, it's the O-hole's.

[GBA]

It's a matter of Liberal Thought meets the Peter Principle.

Did you get the memo?

The Peter Principle was supplemented, then replaced with the Slick Willie and lonely Tony's Weiner revisions.

[aquila48]

It’s. Racism - the secret service doesn’t want to protect this president because he’s black. I’m surprised they pulled this out of their bag yet.

[CIB-173RDABN]

The simple answer is because no one pays the price for mistakes or error in judgement.

When I heard the head of the Secret Announce that she accepted all blame I fully expected her to resign her position. But of course she did not.

That is the common denominator in all this. While some low level staff may be punished (and rightly so), seldom is anyone on the top ever made to pay the price for their failure of leadership.

While this is also true in the private sector it is ingrained in the public sector. All employees are protector regardless of how well or poorly they perform.

In time the head of the Secret Service may retire (with full pension and benefits) to spend more time with her family.

[atc23]

Yeah but he’s just as much white as he is black - granted, his wife is black but as I understand it, his mother was a little white slut from Kansas that led such a sheltered life she made up for it by sleeping around with colored radicals from Africa and such

[kiltie65]

Incompetent intruder!

[Savage Beast]

This is the crux of the matter: "everybody knows perfectly well what is going on".

Millions don't want to admit it.

The press covers it up.

Note tagline.

[B4Ranch]

What’s happening is what’s needed to awaken people that feelings aren’t a solid indicator. Facts about a persons experience and proven capability are what we need when we decide who to vote for. Obama was a feel good guy. Now he’s a feel sick guy.

[Billthedrill]

The pattern of this administration is grotesquely incompetent and in a very specific way: senior staff from the State Department through Justice and many of the senior staffers at lower-than-cabinet offices are political appointees with no particular experience at the job they've been given and a stubborn refusal to learn, as if the world is automatically going to be a better place from their mere presence. This is the bitter fruit of unrestrained political correctness and the conviction that so long as the story hangs together and the optics are right, the facts don't matter.

Well, they do matter. And the deer-in-the-headlights looks we're getting from 0bama and his clown car of an administration stem from the sudden realization that they do matter, and that media complicity in framing them for the American public doesn't change a thing on the ground in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, or anywhere else. Gay marriage in camo doesn't really impress the boys in nightshirts waving AK's. They've already solved their buggery issues by inflicting it on their prisoners.

And worse, the people who should care about salvaging something out of this train wreck of an administration are, instead, concerning themselves with how best to manipulate the story and the optics for the benefit of their political party's success in the upcoming elections, because that's all they know how to do, and for them it's the most important thing in the world to hold the steering wheel even if the car goes over the cliff as a result. The rest of us are screaming passengers. As others have pointed out, this isn't American incompetence, it has owners and those owners have names, and they start with "0bama".