Moneybox

Obama’s Health Care Team Should Read The Best and the Brightest

MIAMI, FL - OCTOBER 08: A message is seen on the computer indicating that there are too many visitors on the Affordable Care Act site to continue.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Obama administration is looking to fix HealthCare.gov:

Even now, administration officials are declining to disclose many details about the debugging effort. They will not say how many experts — whom they describe as “the best and the brightest” — are on the team, when the team began its work or how soon the site’s flaws might be corrected. Still, in talking about the repairs, administration officials for the first time conceded that the site’s problems extend beyond well-publicized front-end obstacles, such as with setting up a personal account.

People mangle this all the time, but David Halberstam’s classic book The Best and the Brightest is about how a bunch of smart guys blundered the country into the Vietnam War. This is not the reference you want to make when launching your ambitious initiative.