Tilting at windmills.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Scott Brown, Janet Napolitano, and Leon Panetta - Viewpoint essay

Subordinate power

It was troubling to see Janet Napolitano and Leon Panetta be so defensive about the obvious failures of their respective agencies. Napolitano has an excellent reputation, and I have admired Panetta for years. But good people can become prisoners of their subordinates. Especially in their first year or so heading an agency, leaders are anxious to win the loyalty of their troops. In their eagerness to show that they are on the side of their subordinates, they are reluctant to face what the subordinates are doing that is wrong. After awhile what is wrong becomes part of the leader's record so that he continues to feel compelled to defend it.

I've got mine, Jack

The ultimate example of the "pull up the ladder syndrome" has been provided by Scott Brown's campaign for the Senate. In effect he argued, "We're covered by the Massachusetts health plan, so why risk higher taxes by providing health care for other Americans?"

White-collar whitewash

Goldman Sachs is "considering" expanding a program that requires executives to make charitable contributions, according to a recent report in the New York Times. What a pathetic public relations gesture from a gang I and many others consider white-collar criminals trying to avoid the prison sentences we think they so richly deserve.

Consider just one of the firm's many dubious practices. It sold collateral debt obligations to institutional investors at the same time it was selling these CDOs short. In other words, it was betting against the very same instruments that it had not only sold to innocent institutional investors but had even gone so far as to persuade rating agencies to endorse.

Not perfectible, but improvable

David Brooks has cautioned the nation not to overreact to the underwear bomber. His good point, that "human institutions are always going to miss crucial clues," is correct. But its implication--that we should not do everything we can to prevent another terrorist attack, or attempt to improve human institutions--is terribly wrong.

Brooks ridicules the notion that changing the leader of a bureaucracy will "fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy." But changing the leader may make a difference, as when James Lee Witt replaced his predecessor as head of FEMA and, even more, when Witt was replaced by Brownie. Of course, the organization may also need to change. But cultures, too, can change. The most dramatic example: the change of attitude of the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet between the disaster of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the greatest victory in American naval history at Midway, just six months later. Of course, the culture of the organization didn't change completely, or permanently.

But it did enough to make a big difference in behavior at a crucial time.

Pruning the branch

There's evidence that President Obama sees the underwear bomber as his own Bay of Pigs. Thus the Kennedyesque "the buck stops with me." But will he go on to fire the guilty as Kennedy did, with the CIA's top...