Quote of the Day

Balloon Juice's Tim F. on one enduring lesson of the Walter Reed fiasco-

"The enduring lesson of the Bush years [is that] people who don’t believe in government do a crappy job when they try to run it. You can look practically anywhere in government today and find the same story – managing the occupation of Iraq, science, women’s health, disaster management. Officials in environmental and corporate oversight always seem to have long histories as lobbyists and short to nonexistent experience in management. Nominating Harriet Miers to The Supreme Court is about the most clear-cut and undeniable show of contempt for government institutions imaginable. They simply don’t care enough about the job, even initiatives that they like, to make sure that it gets done right...

...People who use our present circumstances to argue that government can’t manage its way out of a paper bag are either fooling you or fooling themselves. Of course government breaks down when it’s run by people who don’t care to do the job right. Contrary to the bill of goods that ideological partisans want to sell you, that is far from an argument that government shouldn’t take the lead in fixing problems. Rather it is a rock-solid case for putting people in charge who care about doing the job right and have a decent sense of how to go about it."

What he said.

[UPDATE (3/5): This story isn't isolated... new reports show it's not just Walter Reed.]