DHS reflects the entire Bush administration SOP of giving primacy to politics and image.

In DHS is a big, unnecessary mess I quoted interviews with Clark Kent Ervin, the first Inspector General of DHS. In his interview on May 2, 2006, on "Fresh Air," Ervin was asked the following question:

What was the reaction that you got from Tom Ridge, who was the head of Homeland Security when you were the Inspector General, from Ridge and from other leaders in the Department each time you issued a report of problems that you and your team found?

In response, Ervin gave two examples of what he described as the general answer to the question, which was

Time and again–there was never a counter example–the reaction from Secretary Ridge and the rest of his leadership team was either that the problems we were pointing to did not exist, or that we were exaggerating things and making a mountain out of a molehill, or that the problem at issue had already been solved and our reports and recommendations were old news.

See, folks, this is the Bush administration's approach with everything--any criticism or bad news is not tolerated. Those sorts of things could make the administration look bad, and that above all else will not be tolerated. As a result, the objective of the Bush administration is NOT to effectively govern, NOT to serve the American people, but rather to stay in power and bullshit everyone.

Ervin's first example of the DHS SOP was a conversation he had with then Secretary Tom Ridge:

To give you one example, we issued a number of reports about laxity in visa processes–border security matters–and I recall very vividly Secretary Ridge at one point summoning me into his office to complain about that report and asking whether I was his Inspector General and questioning why I was issuing these damning reports. My response to that was that I was not his Inspector General. Instead I was the American people’s Inspector General, and I was issuing these reports because I had an obligation to the Congress and, most importantly, to the American people to apprise them of these vulnerabilities and gaps so that they could be aware of the danger they’re in and so aware of that danger they could put the appropriate pressure on the administration, the Department to do what was necessary to close these security gaps.

(italics reflect Ervin's inflection). This illustrates how in the Bush administration, dedication to service, dedication to the public good, and loyalty to the public rank far behind loyalty to the administration.

And a proper showing of that loyalty requires that the image of the administration must be protected, as shown in Ervin's second example:

On another occasion when, for example, when we completed our work I alluded to earlier at airports, showing just how easy it was for guns and knives and explosives to be sneaked through the then federalized screener workforce, when I presented those results to the then head of TSA, Jim Loy, who subsequently became the Deputy Secretary of the Department, if for example the report said that there was a failure rate of 40% at a given airport, he stopped me midway through the presentation and said, “Clark, why are you focusing on failure rates? Why not talk about the pass rate at that airport, as a pass rate of 60%?” My response was “Jim, because it doesn’t matter if screeners were able to detect these deadly weapons 6 times out of 10 if they were unable to do so 4 times out of 10. Four times out of ten is four times too many in the age of terror.” So, rather than making bad results better, he was focused on making bad results sound better. And that was emblematic of what I found time and again in the Department of Homeland Security during my tenure.

(emphasis added). The Bush administration, led by people such as Karl Rove, governs as if it is in one continuous election campaign. Running the government is nothing more than one big marketing and PR project--or, more to the point, one perpetual piece of propaganda. Regardless of what label is used, the fact remains that the Bush administration--through its actions--continues to show that it cares not about addressing the good of the American people. One would think that at least in the protection of the homeland things would be different.