Correcting Obama.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Barack Obama - Editorial

One troubling fact about the two leading Democratic candidates is that neither has run any organization larger than their Senate staff. Some enterprising reporter should investigate how well they carried out even these modest executive responsibilities, for a president does have to manage the government, despite Barack Obama's notion that the job of the president is not to "go in and run some bureaucracy." Indeed, his attitude betrays a troubling ignorance.

Franklin Roosevelt thought his managerial responsibilities so important that he established the agency now known as the OMB to be his eyes and ears, overseeing the operations of the federal government. He was also famous for enlisting friends and associates, most notably his wife, Eleanor, to go around the country to see how New Deal programs were actually working. He even used Eleanor's lesbian lover, Lorena Hickok, a veteran journalist, to report on the effectiveness of the WPA.

During the 1952 election, Harry Truman was fond...