You don’t fire people you can’t replace
by David Atkins
Republicans want Kathleen Sebelius fired. The President is defending her, noting that she’s not a web developer and not responsible for the website woes.
But whether Sebelius deserves to be fired or not (I don’t believe so) is largely irrelevant to the question of whether she should be fired. The reality is that one of the primary reasons for the difficulty of implementing Obamacare, beyond the fact that it’s a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg public-private neoliberal contraption, is Republican sabotage.
That sabotage will only continue if anyone whose replacement Republicans can block is fired over the rollout. If Obama were to fire Sebelius, Republicans would see to it that no one to the left of Newt Gingrich would be allowed to replace her. Nor is there any reasonable incentive for the President to allow the saboteurs to be given a trophy of that magnitude regardless of her alleged culpability.
Frankly, not only should Sebelius not be fired, the Senate must go forward with filibuster reform at least for Presidential nominees. That way the President will have the leeway to make necessary personnel decisions without the threat of sabotage standing in the way.
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