Obama Administration’s fumbled response to the Ebola threat has both political parties giving the President’s team a resounding thumbs down. To calm an anxious public, the President decided to tap a veteran Washington political insider, Ron Klain, to coordinate the messaging and response going forward. This is a suspect decision with hints of politics where there should be none.
The recent security breach at the White House has a lot of Washington and the nation talking. Most of the White House security is understandable and defendable, but in looking at the most recent security incident and rumors of the Secret Service wanting to expand the security perimeter further, people have had enough of being cordoned off and told to step away from “the People’s House.”
A new Washington Post story details lingering problems at DHS in terms of retaining leadership and talent in some of its most critical positions. If you talk to anyone at the Department today, they’ll tell you firsthand how bad things are. Since this is Washington, and we don’t meaningfully address issues to solve them, let’s play the game we’re all really good at – the blame game.
It’s hard to believe it’s been 13 years since the September 11 attacks. Every generation witnesses horrors but in recording those experiences and sharing them with others we impart the painful lessons learned to lead us to ways to stop them from ever occurring again.
There are no words to describe the horror of the video showing the execution of American journalist James Foley at the hands of ISIS. Today, radicalization is spreading, and religious, civic, and cultural leaders on every continent have a responsibility to step forward to address it. Sadly, those voices don’t seem to be as loud or as savvy as the video we all saw last week.
The release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last American POW in Afghanistan, ends a more than dozen-year American conflict in Afghanistan. The five senior Taliban leaders exchanged for Sgt. Bergdahl, however, will continue to set off debates on the left and right sides of the political aisles.
One of the challenges when a tragic event occurs is communicating to the public about it. What do seasoned professionals cite as most important in responding to devastating incidents? I reached out to two friends and former colleagues to get their take on how people should look to respond to “bad days.”
The White House leaked word yesterday that the President has selected Jeh Johnson, the former General Counsel at the Pentagon in the first term of the Obama Administration, to replace Janet Napolitano as DHS Secretary. It left a lot of people asking, “who?” I can’t find him on anyone’s list of potential DHS Secretary candidates, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The ongoing partial government shutdown and the looming debt ceiling debacle are the latest examples of the U.S. federal government’s perpetual dysfunction. The conflict between Congress and the Executive Office, as well as poor leadership all around, does not just impact budgets and deficits. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also suffered because of a federal government that can’t seem to get much done.
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