Veterans’ Crisis Put Obama on the Defensive as Others Failed to Do
This time, President Obama did not wait. Confronted by reports of mismanagement and besieged by members of his own party, he gave in to the pressure and performed the sort of ritual Washington sacrifice he has resisted in other times of crisis over the last five years.
The quick exit of Eric Shinseki, the Department of Veterans Affairssecretary, on Friday suggested that the president was unwilling to endure the long political nightmare of the health care website debacle last fall when he stubbornly hung on to his health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, for months before finally accepting her resignation long after the damage was done.
In part, the disparate response reflected the bruising lessons of the health care episode. But it also underscored the more fundamental danger to Mr. Obama as he once again finds himself on the defensive over issues of basic management of the federal government. For a president who came to office hoping to restore public faith in government as a force for good in society, the mess at the Department of Veterans Affairs threatens to undercut his reputation for effectiveness.
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Major Reports and Testimony on V.A. Patient Wait Times
Problems with waiting times for veterans seeking medical care have been documented dozens of times by federal agencies over the past 15 years.
That political reality has fixated Mr. Obama’s advisers in recent days amid growing reports that Veterans Affairs officials manipulated data to hide long delays for patients seeing physicians. In the halls of the West Wing, there is a much more palpable sense of concern over the veterans’ situation than there ever was about other scandals that have afflicted the administration, like the furors over the talking points on the attack at the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, or the I.R.S.’s targeting of conservative groups.
If the Benghazi and the I.R.S. controversies riled Republicans, poor treatment of veterans has the potential to alienate a broader portion of the public across party lines, as evidenced by the outcry from Democratic members of Congress demanding Mr. Shinseki’s resignation. And combined with the health care affair, it calls into question Mr. Obama’s mastery of the government he oversees.
“The conclusion that people are drawing now is that he’s inept and can’t govern his way out of a paper bag,” said Peter H. Wehner, a former adviser to President George W. Bush. “If this happened in isolation, that might be different. But the fact that this comes after so many other mistakes just makes it that much harder.”
For Mr. Obama, it raises again a comparison that vexes his aides: Mr. Bush’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, which did lasting damage to the public’s faith in his effectiveness. Once a perception sets in, it is immensely difficult for a president to change it, especially in the second term, as Mr. Bush found.
And so Mr. Obama opted to let Mr. Shinseki go. “It goes to his personal competency, which got hurt a great deal during health care and is probably the reason his approval is still so low,” said a former administration official who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a former boss. “This is a White House that is extremely sensitive to that.”
Advisers to Mr. Obama said he would not push out a cabinet secretary simply to satisfy the braying news media, but they acknowledged that the rising crescendo from Democrats made it untenable for Mr. Shinseki to stay. As unhappy as Democrats were about the botched health care website rollout, the party in general did not demand that Mr. Obama push out Ms. Sebelius.
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“Because of the emotion around this, having so many members of Congress out there, in many ways the decision was sort of the only one the president could make,” said Robert Gibbs, his former White House press secretary and longtime adviser. “Resisting his resignation would have been unsustainable for the administration.”
Mr. Obama, much like Mr. Bush before him, has long bristled at the idea of dismissing loyal advisers in response to criticism just because that is how Washington works. Advisers could not recall him ousting an appointee with as high a profile as Mr. Shinseki in the thick of a crisis like this before.
Former Senator Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination for secretary of health and human services in 2009 after tax questions were raised, but he had not actually taken office. A White House aide was fired for arranging for Air Force One to buzz New York for a photo opportunity, but he was not well known. Dennis Blair, the president’s first intelligence director, was pushed out, but not because of any public controversy. And Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was fired for impolitic comments, but he was not a member of Mr. Obama’s circle.
“To make this change, he felt that staying the course would actually be harmful to the fixes that need to happen, as opposed to changing the press narrative, which is something he would never do,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser.
Still, Mr. Obama struggled to explain the different approaches. Keeping Mr. Shinseki, he explained, would have been “a distraction” from the important work of fixing the problems at the department. But getting rid of Ms. Sebelius right away, he said, would have been “a distraction” from the important work of fixing the problems with the health care website.
The difference was particular to the two situations, advisers said. With health care, the open enrollment period was rapidly closing, and switching leaders at that time would have complicated it. With Veterans Affairs, the issues are so systemic that it will take a long time to address and there was no sense in waiting.
At the same time, it is clear the White House views the veterans issue with more alarm than some of the other controversies of the last couple years, like how it publicly characterized the attack in Benghazi. “There’s a feeling, and I share it, that these were manufactured crises mainly by Republicans and pumped up by cable news and Twitter,” Mr. Plouffe said. “This one’s got some reality to it.”
And it is a reality with a face, namely the troops who came home from war only to find a system incapable of helping them deal with their wounds. Mr. Obama’s decision to let Mr. Shinseki go capped a week when he visited Afghanistan, announced a phased withdrawal and addressed graduating cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Many of those coming home to find a dysfunctional Department of Veterans Affairs were ordered into combat by Mr. Obama in the first place. “What has to weigh heavily on anyone who makes those decisions is how those service members are treated when they return,” Mr. Gibbs said. “To be the commander in chief who ended those wars and not brought those service members to a V.A. that served them properly would have been a remarkable stain on that record.”
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