FLATTERING TO W, BUT DISAPPOINTING:

Janet Napolitano sets new tone on terrorism (JEN DIMASCIO, 7/29/09, Politico)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Wednesday sought to set a new tone for the department’s efforts to fight terrorism on the home front.

“For too long, we’ve treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than an asset in our nation’s collective security,” Napolitano said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
[...]

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, agreed.

“We can’t hire enough security people, we can’t build enough fences, we can’t buy enough K9s necessary to be secure against every vulnerability,” Thompson said. “But we can put bright people in a room and come up with some protocols that will give us the level of security without as much financial investment as we have in the past.”

In more conciliatory tones, Napolitano said that “progress toward a more secure homeland doesn’t belong to any one political party,” and she adopted a mantra from Bush’s first Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, that “our physical U.S. borders should be our last line of defense, not our first.”

In fact, rather than new approaches, Napolitano’s address often suggested that her department is seeking to build on policies of the past, particularly in her expanded focus on international diplomacy.

It's revealing that all they can come up with is a change of tone and that Mr. Thompson still thinks it's about a roomful of smart people, but if Ms Napolitano would only follow where her tone leads she could bring back Admiral Poindexter's plan for a terrorism market and get the wider public really involved while exploiting the wisdom of the crowd.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 30, 2009 7:09 AM