I’m getting tired of writing about the security breach at at the Office of Personnel Management. I just finished reading the Wall Street Journal editors’ take:
While little noticed, the IRS admitted this spring it was also the subject of a Russian hack, in which thieves grabbed 100,000 tax returns and requested 15,000 fraudulent refunds. Officials have figured out that the hackers used names and Social Security data to pretend to be the taxpayers and break through weak IRS cyber-barriers. As Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has noted, the Health and Human Services Department and Social Security Administration use the same weak security wall to guard ObamaCare files and retirement information. Yet the Administration is hardly rushing to fix the problem.
Way back in March 2014, OPM knew that Chinese hackers had accessed its system without having downloaded files. So the agency was on notice as a target. It nonetheless failed to stop the two subsequent successful breaches. If this were a private federal contractor that had lost sensitive data, the Justice Department might be contemplating indictments.
Yet OPM director Katherine Archuleta and chief information officer Donna Seymour are still on the job. Mr. Obama has defended Ms. Archuleta, and the Administration is trying to change the subject by faulting Congress for not passing a cybersecurity bill. But that legislation concerns information sharing between business and government. It has nothing to do with OPM and the Administration’s failure to protect itself from cyber attack.
which illustrates not just rank incompetence but outright indifference to the nuts and bolts of running the government.
When Barack Obama first ran for the presidency in 2008, he was something of a cipher. At this point there are a few things we can say about him with some confidence. He’s got his eyes firmly on the history books. He has complete confidence in his own abilities and opinions. And he has almost complete indifference verging on disdain for either the process of managing the federal government or for ordinary politics.
Which brings us around to the field of those running for the presidency. We don’t need another Barack Obama at this point. Despite their large number there are few substantial candidates. I can only see three. First there’s Jeb Bush against whose candidacy I have grave reservations on republican grounds. Then there’s Rick Perry who strikes me as a charming, handsome numbskull. Finally, there’s Carly Fiorina who has an asterisk next to her name because of her ouster from HP.
On the Democratic side there’s bupkis. Hillary Clinton is neither an effective politician nor a manager. She’s basically Barack Obama in a pants suit. Bernie Sanders might be a politician but he’s no manager. Anybody else is hanging back.
Bring me giants!
It’s not a hack if they had root access. The government didn’t just give that information away, it paid foreign nationals to take it away. Has there ever been an intelligence operation that’s turned a profit during the info gathering stage before this?
God how I wish I could find the comment where Reynolds told me that Obama was going to usher in The Age of Competence.
So Dave wants more candidates. Every Man a King, Every Man a Contender.
I think all of the Republican candidates who have served as governors are contenders as they’ve had executive experience. It’s just that I think Perry and Huckabee are old news and unlikely to achieve more than before, and the others seem like they need a little more seasoning. I wonder if Kasich has waited too long.
Waiving party affiliation, Dave who do you think could be considered a “giant” type of candidate?
I think that the governors of California, New York, Texas, and Florida barring any other stoppers are credible candidates more or less automatically. I’m not as sure about New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Illinois. And an Arkansas governor is not automatically qualified. Clinton was a special case. He’d been a governor for a very long time, chairman of the governors’ association, etc. Even then he wasn’t all that well qualified.
The process tends to discourage them from running. The closest I can think of right now is Jim Webb.
Texas has a weak governor system. Not that involved with the nuts and bolts of running things. The risk of a governor is that they usually have zero foreign policy expertise.
Steve
Agree with steve about the Texas governor thing. I’m w9oilling to bet steve wasn’t as concerned with the lack of foreign policy experience in a candidate in 2008. But it’s probably that the words meant something completely different then.
I’d think Mayor of NYC should be a decent proving ground, too. The labyrinthine bureaucracy & politics of NYC should be a decent test of how one would handle DC’s environs. The problem is, Mayors of NYC tend to be too NYC for the rest of the country to stomach.
“I’m w9oilling to bet steve wasn’t as concerned with the lack of foreign policy experience in a candidate in 2008.”
I was very familiar with the extensive policy experience of McCain and the people he would have chosen as advisors. That made it imperative he be kept out of office.
Steve
God how I wish I could find the comment where Reynolds told me that Obama was going to usher in The Age of Competence.
You were unaware of his side career in fantasy writing? On any given day at OTB you can find same.