Question And Quotes Of The Day: The Blameless President

Is the President setting a tone whereby accountability always stops elsewhere?

It certainly feels that way.

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From Reason:

"Here's the thing, I can totally understand something like Fast'n'Furious getting the okiedoke from the President, any President. But you only get to play the "underlings didn't tell the boss" card so many times before people start asking (even taking him at his word), "why don't your employees tell you bad news?"

...He's a blame-fixer, not a problem-solver. You go to problem-solvers with a problem and they may blister your hide, but then they go out and get you the resources to fix the problem. Blame-fixers, you avoid, because all they want to do is tell you to "fix it". Even if you can't, and it is obvious that the boss needs to get involved."

"...I work as a government contractor. When I started the job we pretty much did what the customers, the government users, wanted. When something would go wrong we would immediately go to work fixing it. Well, the upper bureaucrats didn't like that.
 
Now nothing gets done until a bureaucrat explicitly approves it. That's why I waste so much time here. And when something goes wrong, figuring out who to blame is the most important thing. Fixing the problem? Not so much.
 
I imagine most of government is like that. Don't do anything unless you are told, that way you're not responsible. The person who told you what to do is responsible, so they give you as little to do as they possibly can. And if anything goes wrong, pointing fingers is more important than actually fixing the problem."

I think they call this sclerosis.