It was not that long ago that I found myself watching some pundits discuss President Obama's response to the underpants bomber. The focus was on the failure by various intelligence agencies to effectively communicate the information in appears they had prior to the attempted bombing. One of the talking heads was explaining how this latest intelligence failure did not look good for the administration and how it had upset Obama. He went on to say that Obama was not interested in "pointing fingers" or "assigning blame" and that he "wants to look forward instead of backward." Now where have we heard that line before?

I am a big fan of problem-solving. It occupies a significant portion of my work life, and it fits well with my reality-based worldview. So when I see such an infuriating response from our President about an issue as important as our national security, I tend to get a bit upset. It seems to me that he is abandoning even the pretense of problem-solving and asking us to collectively stick our heads in the sand.

Sometimes effective problem-solving requires the attribution of blame in order to prevent future occurrences of the problem. This is how the criminal justice system works, and it is how most of our own lives work. If a co-worker does something so egregious that he should be fired and nobody seems to care, the environment becomes increasingly toxic and the odds of similar behavior in the future increase.

Those desperate to rationalize their continued support for Obama will point to his predecessor and argue that at least he's better than Bush in this regard. They have a point. Bush not only failed to hold the incompetent or malevolent accountable, he rewarded them. I agree that this was worse, but it should not take Obama off the hook for a second.

When someone screws up in a big way - especially in a way that endangers us, degrades our reputation, or makes it harder for us to do our jobs, it is only natural to expect the boss to knock some heads. We look to the boss to set the tone by holding wrongdoers accountable and demanding better. President Obama has repeatedly shown that he is unwilling to do this, and this should diminish our confidence in his suitability for leadership.

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