I’m wondering what the editors at Politico were thinking when they let through this bizarre line about Obama being such an abysmal manager that only his death by assassination is likely to bring about needed reform of the Secret Service.
The piece in question is a quickly published piece in Politico Magazine by Ronald Kessler.
Kessler is a legitimate expert on national law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He’s written many books on these topics. I actually interviewed him a couple times for pieces I wrote just after 9/11 on post-attack preparedness, intelligence sharing and related topics. But over the last decade he’s made a hard veer to the right, with a heavy dose of Obama-hating conspiracy mongering.
All of which is to say that on this topic Kessler is simultaneously a genuine expert and a bit of a kook.
So here’s the kicker at the end of the piece.
Agents tell me it’s a miracle an assassination has not already occurred. Sadly, given Obama’s colossal lack of management judgment, that calamity may be the only catalyst that will reform the Secret Service.
Read that a few times.
So Obama is at fault for his inevitable assassination, or he’s the only thing standing in the way of cleaning up the agency responsible for his inevitable assassination.There’s a lot packed into that two sentence flourish. But all of it is deeply f’d up.
I really wonder what the Politico editors were thinking.
