We don’t normally expect our presidents to pay close attention to how long veterans are being asked to wait for care in the vast medical system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
But we do expect presidents to appoint Cabinet officers and other aides who can run the federal government well — well enough, at least, to prevent full-blown scandals from erupting. That’s what the VA’s long-running scheduling problems have turned into after reports that veterans died while waiting for medical care, and bureaucrats apparently manipulated records to make their performance look good when it wasn’t.
It’s an especially dangerous scandal for President Barack Obama because it fits into an established narrative about his presidency: that he’s a skilled politician and speechmaker but a lousy manager.
The biggest problems Obama has faced in the White House, aside from unrelenting opposition from Republicans in Congress, have come not from making policy but from trying to implement it. The calamitous launch of his health care plan last fall is the biggest and most painful example, but it’s only one of several.
The 2009 economic stimulus plan’s “shovel-ready” projects that took months to start; the confused response to the 2010 BP oil spill;the flap over IRS scrutiny of conservative organizations; even the State Department failures that led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi in 2012 — all were mainly lapses in management, not policy.
The president’s conservative critics have accused him, often wildly, of every sin they can think of, from diabolical conspiracy (in the case of the IRS) to dereliction of duty (Benghazi). But the charge that’s likely to stick is one that connects all those unrelated events to an underlying truth: Obama has never paid as much attention to the nitty-gritty of management as he has to making policy and campaigning for votes.
“Presidents get elected because of their rhetorical skills, but they succeed or fail based on their managerial skills,” warned Elaine Kamarck, a former White House aide to Bill Clinton who directs a center on public management at the Brookings Institution. “In this administration … somehow, there is no adequate communications system. The White House keeps getting hit by these unpleasant surprises.”
Bad management alienates even a president’s allies, Kamarck noted.
“His popularity can go down and stay down,” she said. “That’s what happened to Jimmy Carter in the last year of his presidency. That’s what happened to George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina.”
And now, “that’s the narrative about Obama.”
It’s possible to hold out some optimism amid the scandals.
“Every crisis is also an opportunity,” said Phillip E. Carter, an expert on veterans affairs at the Center for a New American Security. “Fixes are available at the VA, and this is the time to put them in place.”
It’s even possible that the White House has learned some management lessons. After the health care website crashed last fall, Obama named a seasoned administrator, Jeffrey Zients, to take charge — and seven months later, the health insurance program appears to be working.
Two weeks ago, Obama created a White House post — deputy chief of staff for policy implementation — and filled it with Kristie Canegallo, an aide who worked with Zients on the health care crisis. “We have determined we need more senior-level focus on implementation and execution,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said in announcing her appointment.
Good call. Too bad it came too late to help some of those vets.
Doyle McManus is an Opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Jay Bookman’s column will return soon.
