StratBlog

James Hoagland of the Washington Post was part of a panel of reporters on the 6/28/05 edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show discussing President Bush’s nationally televised speech of the same evening.

Hoagland said, the White House has a “different sense of timing” with respect to the Iraq war. “They lay back fror a long time saying very little. They begin to get into trouble, they begin to fall behind. Then they mobilize. They send the President out to make this kind of speech as if they have all the time in the world.”

Saying the White House sees it differently, he continued, “One of the things that is happening is the public beginning to to say the statements we’re hearing from the White House don’t resemble what we believe is actually happening there (in Iraq).” Hoagland called this “The Famous Credibility Gap,” adding that the President is “trying to buy time.”

Earlier in the day, Bill Schneider of CNN discussed recent poll results on the network’s Inside Politics show. He showed a graph that depicted deteriorating poll numbers over the course of the Iraq war. He noted there were “two upticks” on the graph. Public support for the war went up briefly after the capture of Sadaam Hussein, and again when Iraq held it’s elections. I believe the latest poll showed support is now down to about 40 percent.

Why is this interesting to me? Well it pretty closely matches some thoughts I’ve had about the problem with government. While I’m interested in national politics and such, my career has focused on government enterprises that provide critical fee-based services to the public. You can include many water and sewer systems, transportation systems, electric utilities and the like in this category. They don’t prosecute wars, but they are critical to our well being and livelihoods.

Years ago, a colleague and I used to debate which was better, the public sector or the private sector. Conventional wisdom says the private sector is more efficient, more effective, etc., but we’ve had enough evidence of corruption and malfeasance by both sectors to keep the question in doubt.

So what separates government from business: it’s accountability…