Freedom Line Blog

I wrote here last week that I was ambivalent as to whether Eric Shinseki should lose his job as Secretary of Veterans Affairs over the scandal involving VA hospitals. My reluctance owed not to any doubts about the gravity of the scandal — it’s utterly horrible — but to a long-held belief that firings should be targeted at the person most directly responsible for error. My feeling was that only if Shinseki either (A) was that person or (B) had knowingly enabled that person, he wasn’t necessarily the right person to get the axe. And, as I noted last week, it seems clear to me that the real problem at the VA has a lot more to do with the structure of the institution and the policies it employs than the management (though it’s utterly plausible that Shinseki wasn’t the right guy to address those deeper issues).

It’s all moot now, of course, as Shinseki’s resignation was announced this morning. This was probably for the best. If anything, I came to lean more towards thinking his departure was the right thing over the last week — not because of the underlying scandal but because Shinseki’s reaction to this outrage seemed muted almost to the point of drowsiness.

It’s nice to see someone in the Obama Administration finally be held responsible for failures (no doubt Kathleen Sebelius’s management of the ObamaCare rollout had a lot to do with her departure, but she was still allowed to leave on her own terms). That said, however, no one should be sanguine about what lies ahead. Sacrificing Shinseki to the media gods may have bought the Obama Administration some time, but it doesn’t solve any of the underlying structural problems at the VA.

One of the reasons that the VA scandal has had so much traction is that it’s utterly non-partisan. Everyone believes government should be doing everything in its power to assist those who’ve worn the uniform of their country. With that in mind, this would be a good time for President Obama to do something truly presidential and look for the best man for the job regardless of political affiliations. What he needs is a proven fixer, someone who can turn around a major organization and root out inefficiencies and rot throughout the system; someone who will do the job as a service to the country rather than as a stepping stone to greater visibility; someone who’ll take the charge seriously even after the story has dropped off the front pages.

There’s a guy out there who’s a perfect fit for this job. Barack Obama ran against him in 2012.