Tribute to Ohio Leadership: Must-share Editorial from New York Times' Frank Rich: "No One Is to Blame for Anything"

I've been meaning to post last Sunday's must-share Editorial from the New York Times' Frank Rich: "No One Is to Blame for Anything"... yesterday, seeing the unapologetic, lifelong-politician baby-boomer Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, who resigned as economic development director of the not-recovering State of Ohio, debate why he should now be promoted to US Senator seems a timely segue... please see linked below an important analysis of the fact "We live in a culture where accountability and responsibility are forgotten values. When “mistakes are made” they are always made by someone else." Rich concludes:

Surveying America’s moral landscape in his Inaugural Address, Barack Obama called for “a new era of responsibility.” And he has tried to live up to his own creed. “I’m here on television saying I screwed up and that’s part of the era of responsibility,” he said after Tom Daschle withdrew as a cabinet nominee. The president has also taken responsibility for screw-ups ranging from his administration’s tardy discovery of bonuses given to bailed-out bankers at A.I.G. to its failed surveillance of the Christmas Day bomber. Though the president is never shy about attributing a $1.3 trillion annual deficit to his predecessor, he is usually quick to hold himself accountable as well for the $787 billion in deficit spending added by his stimulus package.

Obama has been less forceful in stewarding a new era of responsibility when it comes to adjudicating unresolved misdeeds in the previous White House. “Turn the page” is his style, even if at times to a fault. Many of the Bush national security transgressions, including the manipulation of the case for war, are rapidly receding into history and America’s great memory hole.

The president will not have the luxury of mass amnesia when it comes to the recent economic past. The tax-free Iraq war, as cunningly conceived by the Bush White House, directly affected only those American families whose sons and daughters volunteered to fight it. But the Great Recession has affected nearly everyone. Most of its victims are genuinely innocent bystanders who lost their jobs and savings while financial elites cashed in on the crash.

Both as policy and politics, a serious reckoning for those who gamed the system is a win-win. Yet the fear that the Obama administration is protecting its friends persists. On the same morning that Rubin testified last week, Eamon Javers of Politico wrote about [1] his continued influence on his many acolytes in the White House. That includes Geithner, whom Rubin talked with repeatedly in the weeks before the president released his financial regulatory reform proposal last June.

Americans still waiting on Main Street for the recovery that lifted Wall Street once invested their hopes in Obama. Getting the new era of responsibility only 70 percent right won’t do.

Got that, Ohio.

Got that Ohio political leaders. Time to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for the obvious failure of your administrations, say you are sorry, and show you mean it!

Ohio doesn't need any more of blame-shifting, hater leadership, as provided by Fisher - he hates lots of people, and nothing is his fault, EVER.

We need responsible leadership, as demonstrated by Brunner, as Secretary of State.

Find a recording of the City Club debate between Lee Fisher and Jennifer Brunner [2] and really listen to them to understand what I mean.

Read the full Frank Rich: "No One Is to Blame for Anything" Editorial in the New York Times on-line here... it is worlh a full read [3]!!!!!