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Health & Fitness

Utter Incompetence

When it comes to the organization with the largest budget, the greatest revenue and spending, in the solar system, the federal government of the United States of America, the CEO is AWOL.

Recently, during an interview on CNN, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius — the equivalent of the president of a major division of the government — said that President Obama did not know about the issues plaguing healthcare.gov.

If this were the corporate world, Sebelius would resign or be fired for dereliction of duty — not just for overseeing such a disastrous product rollout, but for not keeping the CEO informed of the risks being faced. (Think of the resignation of Sergio Zyman after his “New Coke” disaster…although that resignation was not because he didn’t report to the CEO of Coca-Cola Corporation during the process.)

But this dynamic rests on the premise that the CEO is responsible to shareholders and cares about the company’s bottom line, and often that he would like to have his contract renewed at the appropriate time.

Unfortunately, America has a different kind of CEO. One who is aloof, unfocused on detail, not a leader, and most interested in avoiding responsibility. It is not hard to imagine him telling Sebelius “you handle it,” in part because he is fundamentally lazy and in part because he wants the plausible deniability which led him to so often vote “present” in the Illinois State Senate.

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