Website debacle shows that Obama put his faith in the wrong people

This past issue of TIME features a cover story by Nancy Gibbs, muling about the “broken promises” of “Obamacare,” and what it means for his legacy. First of all, Gibbs—a “contributor” to the sad decline of a once venerable publication—is one of those disgruntled Hillary supporters who after all these years is still unable to face reality, and never wastes an opportunity to debunk the president, even if it is mostly waste. The thing that people should be talking about is not whether or not this country needs a system of affordable health coverage (if not a single-payer system)—it does—but how to make to make this needed thing work. Instead, we have trash media like Fox, CNN and TIME keeping people ignorant about the future of health care if we don’t make reform work.

Come to think of it, now that I mentioned “Hillary” we might also look at how certain people have let Obama down despite the authority he had entrusted them with. Clinton was a travelling side show, receiving what the media called “rock star” treatment—except in Egypt, where they pelted her motorcade with brickbats. I think all that over-the-top praise she received from world leaders when she cut and ran after Benghazi was either to mask their contempt for her, or because behind-the-scenes she was feeding their Obama hang-ups.

The reality is that Clinton was one of the most ineffectual secretaries of state in modern times; it seemed that she was more interested in burnishing her “reputation” than engaging in nuanced diplomacy, which she temperamentally wasn’t suited for. She engaged in the “tough talk” that right-wingers like, but in today’s world that just doesn’t work anymore. Regardless of what one thinks of the Iran deal, John Kerry has already accomplished more of concrete matter than Clinton ever did in four years. 

But even more exasperating for Obama was Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her underling Marilyn Tavenner. Given the importance of getting health care reform off on the right foot, the enormity of their ineptitude dwarfed that of the tag-team of Anne Gorsuch and Rita Lavelle, who at least served prison time for their corrupt antics in Reagan’s EPA.  The Healthcare.gov website, which was supposed to be able to handle a heavy load of users accessing it from the jump, couldn’t even handle a few hundred without running into a traffic jam at the first intersection.

Sebelius told a Congressional panel that she informed the president that the website was “ready to go.” Or at least this is what she was told by Tavenner, who oversees Medicare and Medicaid Services and was “directly” responsible for the construction of the website. Of course, Tavenner probably “delegated” responsibility to the actual website creator—under a contract from the Bush administration—who probably found the task overwhelming but felt obligated to tell her what she wanted to hear. Or perhaps there was just a lot of childish hand-wringing and finger-pointing behind the scenes, hoping that a “miracle” might happen and all the problems with the site were just a bad dream and would disappear in the morning.

Obama’s greatest failing seems to be that he trusts too much in the wrong people he assigns to do a job. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton complained about “bean counters” who wanted top government jobs filled to satisfy political considerations rather than through competency; this was likely the case too often in the Obama administration. I don’t know when or if Obama knew there was a problem before or after the fact, but it is clear that some people were not “big” enough to admit that the job was as too big for them to handle. It is easy for media fringe players like Gibbs to rag on Obama—certainly easier than pointing out the uncomfortable reality that hits too close to “home."