It is telling that the executive departments responsible for those problems - Treasury and HHS - are suffering from a lack of attention by the administration to fully staffing those agencies with competent, honest appointees.
This is an interesting bit of stone throwing, but it is a bit hypocritical in a larger context. Those of us on the right side of politics should be careful what we wish for.
The truth is that there are hundreds of people at HHS in career positions who function with or without a boss. There are also field offices all over the country that continue to do what they did yesterday, the day before, and nothing has changed for them since Obama took his Oath of Office.
I once had a friend who spent a large portion of her professional life working in Washington, DC. She commented that if a nuclear bomb exploded in Washington, DC, nothing much would change, "... the mail would still be delivered, social security checks would still be issued, and since communication out of DC would be broken, it could be years before anyone noticed."
While it makes for nice mud-pies to sling at the opposition, those of us who champion small government and constraining the Federal government to their Jeffersonian-limited levels, need to be careful when we spread ideas that the country will fall apart if we don't have figureheads in DC handling things for us.
Hospitals, nurses, and doctors, as well as local support systems (fire, police, and local health departments) are perfectly capable of handling an epidemic. They have emergency plans for these sorts of things that didn't self-destruct when HHS lost its chairman, nor do they need a Papal blessing to create them. States also have the National Guard to call upon, should they need additional boots on the ground.
HHS or DoD didn't need to tell the fireman at the World Trade Towers how to put out a fire, how to handle a building collapse, how to get medical treatment to the thousands who were injured, nor did the fireman running up the stairs need someone from Washington, DC to tell them how to evacuate a building.
There is always going to be a percentage of people who don't have the good sense to wash their hands or get medical treatment for an illness before it's too late, but whether or not there is someone managing budgets or signing off on public affairs briefings is not going to make a difference. Darwin will take care of those who only listen when Washington, DC conducts a press conference, rather than tuning-in to their local news issuing warnings, or school boards closing schools. It is the job of local health officials, managed by Governors and Mayors who have the responsibility and the ability to handle these matters.
The whole concept of smaller, Constitutionally-limited government is that we don't need HHS, nor a Chief Potentate to tell Americans how to handle an emergency.
The Federal government is strictly limited to national defense, printing coin, and international affairs. Our state governors and city/town mayors are responsible for the domestic security of their citizens, and that includes their health. They know how to coordinate with each other (they have phones and everything), even without a switchboard in Washington, DC to schedule a meeting. In fact, the switchboard in Washington, DC has always been a bottleneck, and the fact that no one is manning it, is a good thing.
Katrina was the most recent warning, with thousands sitting in front of their TV sets wondering when the Federal Calvary was going to arrive. There are folks still complaining about the Federal response, when it was the fault and responsibility of the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans to have and launch an emergency plan. The fact that they didn't have plans, or didn't follow them, was a wake-up call to the locals that they need to choose better, but even with that obvious failure, nothing changed. There are far too few with the gumption to act, "You can all go to Hell. I'm going to Texas."
If Governors and Mayors have been looking to Washington, DC to supply them with enough medicines or vaccines to keep their constituency safe, they have been derelict in their duties.
This should be a wake-up call to them, as well as the rest of us, that a large, centralized bureacracy is never a good strategy for domestic security. Decentralized, local leadership is how our system of government was designed, and it is what we should rely on and look to in times of crisis.
The fact that things are being handled even while there are empty desks at Treasury and HHS should be a reminder that those positions are not needed, nor their entire, bloated departments, not that we're all gonna die if their seats are vacant.
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