In the Obama Administration, Incompetence Is Unbounded!

Incompetence Running Wild
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Accountability: Turns out the Secret Service — which has one job to do — let a knife-wielding intruder all the way into the East Room of the White House. Can't anyone in government do anything right these days?

Time was when the Secret Service seemed an exemplar of professionalism and dedication, an agency with a focused mission and largely immune from the bureaucratic bumbling inherent to big government. In recent years, it's seemed more like Animal House.

The intruder blew past one guard and was stopped only by an off-duty officer.

And this was one of hundreds of apparent security breaches. Even before the latest fiasco, there've been plenty of other examples of dereliction.

One agent was found passed out in a Netherlands hotel hallway this March after a booze-filled night.

Several others were charged with bringing prostitutes to a hotel in Colombia. And let's not forget that the Secret Service failed to notice several bullets had hit the White House until days after a shooter fired them.

It would be bad enough if the Secret Service were the only agency under Obama suffering from what looks like the Peter Principle on steroids.

Veterans have died waiting for the Veterans Affairs system to treat them, despite a rising budget and vows by the president to make the VA run better.

The IRS leadership was ignorant of or complicit with the agency's politically motivated targeting of conservative groups, compounding that with changing stories and ridiculous claims of crashed hard drives and lost emails.

HHS officials spent $2 billion on HealthCare.gov — supposedly Obama's top legislative priority — which failed spectacularly at launch. It still suffers security weaknesses and remains unfinished. A Government Accountability Office audit found rampant management failures and lack of accountability to blame.

The Justice Department sold guns to drug cartels in Mexico, one of which killed a border agent.

The State Department's failure to secure its consulate in Benghazi led to four deaths.

The Border Patrol is incapable of patrolling the border.

Obama seems routinely ill-informed by his staff.

Given that Obama never owns up to his mistakes and the staffers under him are never held to account for theirs, is it any wonder everyone seems — even by government standards — so lackadaisical?

It doesn't help that he keeps appointing nincompoops to key positions. From Kathleen Sebelius to Eric Shinseki to Steven Chu to John Kerry to Chuck Hagel — it's hard to think of any Cabinet official who's up to the job.

In his first inaugural address, Obama promised that "those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account." Maybe he'll get around to that after his 200th round of golf.