{"id":20647,"date":"2017-03-28T02:26:31","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T02:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20647"},"modified":"2017-03-28T02:26:31","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T02:26:31","slug":"the-buck-still-stops-in-the-oval-office-doesnt-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20647","title":{"rendered":"The buck still stops in the Oval Office … doesn’t it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There once was a time when presidents of the United States took the heat when things went badly.<\/p>\n

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President Harry Truman<\/strong> had that sign on his Oval Office desk that declared “The Buck Stops Here.” He knew, for example, that his firing of Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his command post in Korea would be political dynamite at home. But he did so anyway as a statement of support of civilian authority over the military.<\/p>\n

President John F. Kennedy<\/strong> fell on his grenade in 1961 when the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba — which sought to overthrow Fidel Castro\u00a0 — went badly. He told us that “Victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan.” He took responsibility for the failure of the mission.<\/p>\n

Other presidents have assumed responsibility for missteps, mishaps and outright tragedy.<\/p>\n

The current president is not wired that way. Donald John Trump’s first and last<\/em> instinct is to blame others.<\/p>\n

The commando raid in Yemen in which a brave Navy SEAL died was the fault of the “generals” who put the mission together, Trump said.<\/p>\n

Then came the failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump is not taking a lick of responsibility for the failure to cobble together a political alliance that would institute something called the American Health Care Act.<\/p>\n

Oh, no! He said first it was the fault of Democrats who didn’t sign on at all with the AHCA. Then it became the fault of the conservative Freedom Caucus of the House GOP. After that, the president tossed a barb at Republican moderates who hated the AHCA as well.<\/p>\n

Where, oh where is the president’s responsibility?<\/p>\n

Leaders step up when matters go awry, just as they bask in the reflected glory when matters go well. They take the bad along with the good.<\/p>\n

If only the current president could actually lead. He simply cannot fulfill a basic tenet of the office he occupies.<\/p>\n

Presidents Truman and Kennedy are spinning in their graves.<\/p>\n\n

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There once was a time when presidents of the United States took the heat when things went badly. President Harry Truman had that sign on his Oval Office desk that declared “The Buck Stops Here.” He knew, for example, that his firing of Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his command post in Korea would be … Continue reading The buck still stops in the Oval Office … doesn’t it?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[131,6982,6070,1424,6986,2068,2460,2695],"class_list":["post-20647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-aca","tag-ahca","tag-bay-of-pigs","tag-donald-trump","tag-freedom-caucus","tag-harry-truman","tag-jfk","tag-korean-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20649,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20647\/revisions\/20649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}