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.