Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

A Team of All-Stars

Sanger’s Book, is all about Foreign Policy and makes little mention of Domestic Policy. It is my experience in life, both in the study of politics and the organizations I served in, that a Commander or Director, always enjoys playing with the operational toy rather than dealing with the myriad of social problems that come along with organizational leadership.

These People problems become so daunting that the leader is drawn to the operational aspects of the organization’s mission when their energy would have been better spent on pulling the strings of the enablers that surround them. The Obama administration is a good case in point. In Sanger’s book he makes reference to ”Rookie” mistakes and like other chroniclers points to errors of inexperience that began small and snowballed. Perhaps the President’s greatest single error, one that exemplifies this point, is letting the leak problem go viral.

It wasn’t that the President surrounded himself with “Idiots” but rather that the personalities of those he chose were often not compatible. As a sports fan he must have appreciated the importance of “Chemistry” in a teams success. It is the chemistry that surrounds one or two “Franchise” players that makes the team and not a team where everyone thinks and behaves like an All-Star.”

From the beginning the team Obama refers to as “My Whitehouse” played as individuals rather than together. One of the most telling nuggets in Sanger’s book is the following “tongue in cheek” observation.

“…In the surge debate, White House discipline broke down and after each meeting participants in the arguments were pressing their case to reporters… Obama erupted with an (angry outburst)… He made an impression: the leaking stopped for several hours.”

The culture Obama engendered, which saw leaks as a page in the playbook, should have been nipped in the bud. Allowed to propagate it grew into a monster that let directly to the AP and Rosen scandals and continued on into the NSA phone monitoring revelations. A leader involved either in Corporate or Military enterprises would have learned basic skills that a political action organizer never had the opportunity to master.

In his first term the President squandered his political capital on pushing through a Health Care bill that was unworkable. That botched initiative cost him the House of Representatives. While the momentum he enjoyed carried him into a second term all that crested the Night of Benghazi.

That night, there occurred what is called in the writing vernacular, “A Life Changing Event.” Suddenly there was a need to cover up something that was so damning that there was no room for any more leaks. Something happened that was so toxic, it sent a chill reverberating through the inner circles of the Administration. It was the truth of what is now termed the President’s “Disengagement" and it goes far beyond the Death of an Ambassador and three other Americans.