President Barack Obama got a good deal of criticism, even from some liberals this time, for being slow to react to the Veterans Administration scandal, being reluctant to accept the reality of it by calling for yet another investigation, and coming across as dispassionate in talking about it.
There’s little wonder this scandal caught Obama off his game. It illustrates incompetency by his administration and the inefficiency that is inherent in any large bureaucracy, but especially in big government.
From the beginning, Obama campaigned on improving VA health care for veterans and promised them that his team would bring the agency and its care into the 21st century.
The headlines scream failure. Things aren’t getting better. They’re worse, with VA hospital bureaucrats cooking the books to hide the long waits inflicted on ill veterans.
Worse for Obama, this scandal is an indictment of the socialized medicine philosophy that the VA represents. Even worse for the White House, the VA debacle is but the latest, if most heart-wrenching, example of Washington incompetency and bureaucratic inertia.
