Mini-Me: Leon Panetta on Dysfunctional Government + Meta-RECAP

The Washington Post, 30 March 2012

(J. Scott Applewhite — Associated Press) “Dysfunction in Washington … threatens our security and raises questions about the capacity of our democracy to respond to crisis.”

That warning came from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta Thursday night at a dinner sponsored by Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, which had just given him its Eisenhower Award for excellence in leadership.

He called the dysfunction “a political crutch” and “not a part of the American spirit.”

Behind Panetta’s remarks is the frustration he feels looking at the current political deadlock in Congress over deficit reduction. He has been there before — as chairman of the House Budget Committee, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and chief of staff at the White House.

“One thing that I’ve learned over my career is that governing requires people coming together to get things done, not to pound their fists on the table and stand in the way,” he told an audience that included present and former government officials, members of Congress, defense industry representatives and dozens of college students.

Read the puke in the middle.

Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, last December gave the same type of lecture, in which he talked about Washington’s short supply of “civility, mutual respect, putting country before self and country before party, listening to and learning from one another, not pretending to have all the answers and not demonizing those with whom we differ.”

Gates, too, talked about politicians’ inability “to sustain bipartisan strategies and policies needed to address our very real and serious problems.”

There must be something good in the Pentagon’s water.