Groundhog Day: “What happened in the failures of government in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was not something intrinsic to the nature of bureaucracies or the public sector. What happened was a failure of leadership…” More of David Roger’s analysis:

“That failure in leadership was not an accident. It was the result of too many years of too much neglect of the value of public service. For too many years, for too many people, public service has become just a means of advancing oneself in the private sector. People with something to gain, people with a profit motive, selfish, cynical people, have blurred the ideas of authority, responsibility, and accountability. All toward the end of abusing their authority to promote themselves while neglecting or ignoring their responsibilities, oblivious to the shared faith that has become the tattered and fraying social fabric that binds us together.

“That failure in leadership was not an accident. It was the product of a political system that has embraced the ways and the methods of the marketplace to manipulate people, to command their attention or distract it. To craft clever, meaningless messages intended to obscure more than to illuminate. To appeal to fear rather than courage. To value appearance over substance. A marketplace in which honesty and integrity are often perceived as impediments to a healthy bottom line.

“That failure in leadership was not an accident. It was a result of each of us failing to keep faith with each other. Thomas Jefferson is supposed to have said that people usually get the kind of government they deserve. I guess that’s true, even if it is essentially blaming the victim; it often seems like most of our wounds, individual and collective, are self-inflicted. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

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But even more, somewhere out of all this hot air must come a discussion, an argument, (not a ‘conversation’) about the value of public service, the role of leadership, an examination of authority, responsibility, and accountability. We need to take a close look at that ‘social fabric’ that supposedly binds us as a nation. Is it nothing more than a blind faith in the ‘invisible hand’ of the marketplace? How can what is presumably ‘the best of us,’ so grievously fail ‘the least of us?’ What do we expect from our leaders in the way of leadership, at all levels of government? And don’t look to our so-called ‘leaders’ to lead this discussion.”

Although the post is long, it is well written and I recommend you read it all.

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…