Gitzo wrote:
Obama BFF (for Now) on Scene (for Now) to 'Save' Obamacare
John Ransom | Nov 29, 2013
In a Thanksgiving missive that reads more like a love letter to the man than a newspaper article, the Washington Post has announced that Denis McDonough, the White House Chief of Staff, is now in charge of the healthcare hairball.
McDonough is now holding evening meetings every day with key players in the health care rollout, says the Post, offering support even as he holds agency leaders accountable.
Support and accountability? Wow. Evening work too. Whoa.
In Obamas White House?
If I were McDonough, Id get my resume ready. Perhaps when hes looking for work next time, he can just not mention the whole White House thing.
Its almost as if Obamas popularity is depending on the implementation of the healthcare law.
In any event, Im wondering why McDonough wasnt holding evening meetings, offering support and accountability for the law last January when he took over as Chief of Staff?
Thats what chiefs of staff do.
Of course, in this White House, they need more of a "caretaker" or a "minder" than a chief of staff, but thats another topic for another day.
Herding cats doesnt even begin to define the management problems of the administration, unless you allow for the cats to be drug-addled relics from the 1960s and 1970s.
In my own personal experience, Ive had a few assignments in my life with a lot less public and personal importance than Obamacare. Yet I prepared like my life depended on them, because, um, you know
for those of us in the private sector, success counts for something.
Like our paycheck and job security.
There was that time for example, when an associate and I were trying to conduct a hostile takeover of a failing federally-insured bank to save it from shutting its doors. At the same time we were running a competitive primary to get him elected to Colorado State House.
The stakes werent that high.
Only my whole paycheck
from July to the rest of the year. And his paycheck, too.
Nights, weekends? Yes and yes.
Whatever it took, hard work-wise, to make the deal happen we did it.
In the end, we won; we saved the bank.
But the shareholders won, the depositors won and, best of all, the taxpayers who didnt have to bailout a bad bank won too.
All of us have had experiences like this in life when we trying to do something hard
and we ended up successful.
We all know that the student that studies improves his odds a lot. All it takes is a bit of foresight and hard work in preparation.
So if you look at healthcare.gov as a sort of bad bankit is after all federally insured against failure by the American taxpayers-- my question is: "Why keep the management that got us to this point in the first place"?
Is McDonough really the guy to save it? Or Obama?
If you have something that significant, says Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as reported by the WaPo, thats the kind of thing I would think Id have somebody sleeping with it day and night. When they go to the bathroom, theyre on the cell phone talking about it. When they go to sleep, they dream about it.
Yeah.
BEFORE it became a problem.
We went straight into problem solving, McDonough told the Post. We knew that going into this, that no plan survives first contact. We knew that we would be confronted with challenges along the way.
Not really.
Because first contact is a term for war, not for well-crafted legislation.
Perhaps it was a Freudian slip. Perhaps the administration really does think legislation is like waging war on the populace.
It would explain a lot about how they do things.
My experience is that good laws survive first contact if you read and comprehend them before you vote for them.
Even bad laws can survive if implemented in smart ways.
But when you have the wrong guys implementing the wrong laws, youre in for trouble.
No amount of catching up will fix the flaws in Obamacare.
No amount of patching will fix the flaws in Obama either.
Good luck to Mr. McDonough, but if hard work can fix this thing, hes the wrong guy with the wrong boss and the wrong laws.
Let's try changing one those three first.
And Gitzo says.....
It will be fun listening to how our "in-house libs" will attempt to spin this piece, trying to make the author look like the "dummy" here; (with libs, it's ALWAYS "about" the other guy being "to blame"; ) (and they still haven't figured out why we call their idol, "Oblameo"! )
Obama BFF (for Now) on Scene (for Now) to 'Save' O... (
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