Enter
Obamacare website — I will highlight the hell out of the parts that
I’d most like to sink in:
“We’ll be completely transparent with the press,” Kris responded, correctly presuming
that she already had the job.
“We’ll admit and even highlight our mistakes.”
“Okay. I understand the not lying, but my guess is that as a
start-up, we’re going to have
more than our fair share of
screwups. Why would we want
to bring them to the press’s attention?” I asked, intrigued.
“Because if we do, we’ll earn
the press’s trust. They’ll know
we’re not spinning like everyone else. SIGTARP will quickly
become the only credible source
for information in Washington about TARP. We might be
embarrassed at times and
disclose things that we could
— and others would — easily
hide, but we’ll shock the press
with our honesty. No one else
does this, and before long, we’ll
have a built in defense when
we’re attacked. No matter what
they hear, the press will come to
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
10.27.13
us first and believe us, because
we’ll prove to them that we
tell the truth.”
The merits of the strategy are
so extremely obvious that it’s
confounding that these two are
the only people in Washington
who have ever seemed to figure
it out. The above passage should
be carved on stone tablets and
heaved at people.
What is the risk of
taking responsibility?
Are you worried that it might
catch on in Washington?”
This is one of the Beltway’s cultural problems. There’s a reason
I bolded and underlined the part
where Belisle says, “No one else
does this.” Spoiler alert: It’s because no one else does this.
According to the emerging “what
went wrong” narrative, there seem
to have been ample forewarnings that the website wouldn’t be
ready for primetime. But culturally,
Washington is a place where no one
wants to be the bearer of bad news,
and every gang of bureaucrats proceeds from the notion that “job