Again and again I read — or hear directly from administration supporters — this excuse that any questioning of the administration’s record in foreign affairs, or Iraq, or even on other matters is just a deplorable focusing on the past, a distraction, when the nation faces grave challenges which we need to focus on solving.
This is more than just simple buck-passing. It is a sort of through-the-looking-glass version of how problem-solving and accountability are supposed to work. It also has the perverse benefit of allowing the scope of the administration’s failures to become reasons for not discussing those failures — a sort of self-reinforcing anti-accountability causality loop, with all manner of moral hazards built in.
We’ve created such a mess that we don’t have the time or the luxury to start second-guessing how badly we screwed things up!
I’ve always been strict about keeping four-letter words off this site. So I apologize for the graphic nature of this analogy. But this is like I come back to my office to find my new employee has taken a crap right on my desk.
Puzzledly and not happy, I say, “What, umm … what happened here?”
To which he replies, “There you go again, always focusing on the past, how this or that could have been done differently, when what’s really important is the future, how we deal with this and other challenges we’re going to face.”
To which I would reply, “No. The future is exactly what I’m thinking about. And that’s why you’re fired. Because in the future I can’t afford to have anyone working here who craps on my desk, and then when I confront them about it all they can do is dodge responsibility with moronic excuses and try to put the blame on me for asking what the hell is going on.”
These guys should be fired too.
And, no, I wouldn’t advise the Kerry campaign to base a 30 second ad on this analogy.
