The Problem With Blaming Obama For Ebola

Should Republicans and conservatives be blaming
President Obama for the government’s handling of Ebola? Plenty of
them are, but that might not be a good idea,
says Philip Klein of
The Washington Examiner—at least not for those who would
generally prefer a smaller and less activist
government. Klein, citing National Affairs
editor Yuval Levin, argues that pinning the blame on President
Obama lends credence to the idea that the president should be at
the center of all national issues: 

Though there are fair criticisms of the CDC’s handling of Ebola,
by giving into the temptation to point fingers at Obama,
Republicans run the risk of reinforcing the idea that any crisis or
perceived crisis can be handled if only there were a better person
in charge. And this could cut against many of the arguments that
conservatives usually make about the inherent problems with federal
bureaucracies.

Reacting to criticism of the handling of Ebola, Yuval
Levin noted
in a post over at National Review, “The attitude is
premised on the bizarre assumption that large institutions are
hyper-competent by default, so that when they fail we should seek
for nefarious causes. Not only liberals (who are at least pretty
consistent about making this ridiculous mistake) but also some
conservatives who should know better respond with a mix of outrage
and disgust to failures of government to contend effortlessly with
daunting emergencies. But do we really expect (or even want) our
government to have the power and ability to smooth all of life’s
edges and be ready in an instant to address the consequences of,
say, a major hurricane or massive oil spill or deadly disease
outbreak? What do we think that government would be doing with that
power the rest of the time?”

One of the fundamental failures of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign
was that he didn’t make a coherent, overarching, philosophical
argument against big government. The impression Romney gave was
that large federal institutions weren’t necessarily innately
flawed, but merely mismanaged. If only Americans elected Romney —
the turnaround whiz who built businesses — to “run” the country,
those institutions would perform well.

I think criticizing the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) is basically 
fair, especially in light of some of its admitted mistakes and
recent history of safety problems. The once-respected agency has
taken a huge hit in public opinion recently, dropping from 60
percent public confidence in March of last year to 37 percent now.
That’s not unreasonable. The CDC should be doing a better job at
this, its core mission.  

But Klein makes a good point about criticism directed at
President Obama. What can Obama, himself, really do? I suppose he
can appoint (yet another) Ebola czar, but is yet another high-level
federal issue-czar really what supporters of limited government
should want? Most of the direct action in treating and preventing
Ebola happens at the local level, with local authories and health
providers making crucial calls. The administration can provide
those local authorities with the flexibility and resources they
need, but otherwise, especially at this stage, the best option is
probably to stay out of the way. 

A lot of the Republican calls for action, in contrast, have
taken the opposite approach: We’ve seen Republicans
call for travel bans to and from West Africa, and for
massive efforts to tighten security at international entry
points. GOP politicians helped
lead calls for the installation of a
new czar (despite opposing other czar appointments in the
past). It’s all just playing into the idea that if there’s a
problem, it needs to be a national emergency, possibly a panic, and
the president needs to fix it.