Julia Pierson: Poster woman for executive branch failures

By:  LeRoy Goldman

Asheville Citizen - Times

The day following her disastrous hearing on Capitol Hill Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned. No one is surprised. She should never have been promoted to lead the Secret Service. The failures that have occurred on her brief watch make that abundantly clear. But beyond her lack of competence, and proclivity to focus on protecting her job and reputation, rather than the President, the public exposure of Pierson’s failings serve to highlight a much broader problem in the Executive Branch. It has far too many “Julia Piersons” in positions of leadership and authority. Too many of them, like Pierson, occupy those posts as a consequence of the perniciousness of political correctness.

Pierson testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on September 30th and made matters worse for herself by appearing to be unprepared, unforthcoming, and self-protectively bureaucratic. The bipartisan blistering she received was a rare example of Congress working together and doing the right thing.

Pierson was appointed by President Obama to head the Secret Service in March of 2013 following the damaging revelations that multiple Secret Service agents had been with as many as 20 prostitutes at the Caribe Hotel in Cartagena, Colombia in 2012 just prior to the president’s arrival.

A year after Pierson’s appointment three Secret Service agents responsible for protecting the President in Amsterdam were sent home after a night of drinking. One of the agents was found passed out in a hotel hallway. They were in Amsterdam preparing for President Obama’s trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia. All three were members of the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team. The team is an elite unit that is the last line of defense in protecting the President—hard to do when you’re unconscious. Regarding the mentally ill fence jumper who entered the White House before being taken down, the Secret Service first said he was unarmed. He had a knife. Then they said he was subdued immediately upon entering the Mansion. In fact, he was not taken down until after penetrating deeply into the Mansion. In addition, a security contractor with a gun and multiple convictions for assault was allowed to ride in an elevator with the President during his visit to the CDC in Atlanta only days before the fence jumper incident. More troubling was the fact that it appears that the Secret Service’s review of that incident was an effort to keep the matter concealed, according to reporting by Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post.

The best Pierson could say at the House hearing on September 29th was, “Yes, mistakes were made”. In the Washington Post on September 30th Dana Milbank sums it up by saying, “it looks as if Secret Service secrecy is not meant to protect the president’s life but to protect an arrogant agency from reform and embarrassment.”

Pierson has demonstrated she can’t do the job. Moreover, she should never have been appointed in the first place. Her appointment had much to do with the optics of appointing a woman following the Service’s “prostitute” scandal in Cartagena. It was an appointment driven by political correctness.

What many Americans do not realize is how pervasive political correctness decision making has become throughout the Executive Branch. It’s been underway since the 1980s, and that means after 35 years, it’s well entrenched. In addition, the byzantine nature of Federal work rules are a powerful ally of this corrosive force. Everybody knows that it’s almost impossible to oust a Federal employee. In fact, it’s so hard that it’s rarely attempted.

When you add a directive to employ and promote individuals simply because they are members of this or that group to a workforce that is already hamstrung by work rules that cripple managers you end up with agencies that too often can’t or won’t fulfill their mission and are expert in resisting efforts to expose or correct their deficiencies. Paradoxically far too many white male senior managers contribute mightily to this systemic problem. Fearful of being the recipients of the blizzard of discrimination complaints that would jeopardize their careers, they turn a blind eye to this problem and, thus, become its accomplice. Ousting Julia Pierson is barely the beginning of what needs to be done. If you think you can fix the IRS, or the VA, or the HHS, or the Pentagon without confronting this problem, you’re Whistling Dixie.

Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was member of the Federal Government’s Senior Executive Service for many years. He can be reached at:  EmailMe 

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