Granted, I’m sure it is challenging for a president to stay personally apprised of the wealth of mismanagement, incompetence, and downright corruption that takes place in the massive machine we now have for a federal bureaucracy, a machine that President Obama didn’t create all on his own — but… if one of your basic premises for governing is that we should be expanding and empowering that bureaucracy further and further, you should perhaps make just a bit more of an effort with the accountability on, oh, I don’t know — your crowning legislative achievement. Or maybe by not sending signals to government employees everywhere that disastrous ineptitude and/or fraud will basically be met with a shrug of the executive’s shoulders, on both the Veterans’ Affairs fiasco and other actually deadly scandals. Via RCP:

REPORTER: What about this criticism of his management style? Is he too detached from some of the nuts and bolts of running the government, running an administration —

JAY CARNEY: I know that’s a Republican meme, and —

REPORTER: — [inaudible] catching him off guard. The healthcare website, now this.

CARNEY: I think that if you look at how the president handles a challenge like the website and handles this challenge, he responds by demanding action, demanding that Americans who are counting on benefits and services — whether it is a functioning website or benefits through the VA — that they are taken care of. And you saw that with the efforts that were undertaken to fix the website and you’ve seen that with the efforts that are already underway to investigate the problems and allegations that have arisen here with regards to the waiting times for appointments at facilities around the country. And he expects results and he holds people accountable. And when we see whether or not some of these allegations prove to be true, he will insist that misconduct, mismanagement will be met with consequences.