Clear and present danger

Daniel Henninger writes:

Ebola’s spread in West Africa was predicted. Government agencies responded late. Now it’s here. The Secret Service is so disorganized it can’t protect, of all things, the White House. Veterans died waiting for admission to VA hospitals. The CDC lost track of anthrax, smallpox and H5N1 bird-flu samples. At the State Department, no one seems to quite know why a U.S. ambassador died in Benghazi. The 9/11 Commission explained in detail how the attackers evaded the bureaucracies. Add to this list the Internal Revenue Service, an agency of extraordinary power that has forfeited the public’s trust.

It is past time to start thinking about how much could be going wrong at so many federal agencies. Watchful waiting isn’t the cure for the next bureaucratic meltdown.

Suddenly, the federal bureaucracies look like a clear and present danger to the American people. Even progressive defenders of the administrative state must be getting nervous at the disarray in the response to Ebola.

Read more here.