Stray Thought

I will occasionally see a news article stating that Bush has directed something or other of an administrative nature, like (I'm making these up, because I don't recall any at the moment) a review of current payment policies for unwed mothers medical fees, or the admission limits to national parks during periods of severe weather, or airliner stacking at densely used airports. They're rarely objectionable, and they're usually issued shortly after some politicall sensitive event (ie, an unwed mother goes bankrupt because the local food bank won't accept her checks anymore because she had to spend her money on expensive meds; a schoolbus crashes into a ravine during an abrupt snowstorm in Yellowstone; there are massive complaints about travel delays at peak periods at O'Hare International.

When I see these things, I usually assume that someone, somewhere, was already looking at this, or thinking about it, or planning to get around to it, and the effect is to rejigger their priorities, rather than to suggest something that hadn't been contemplated, and ought to be. And thats okay; the role of an administrator should be to set priorities. But it makes me wonder: why is it needed only when something visibly went wrong? Or is it more that this rejiggering happens all the time because there aren't enough resources to support all of the initiatives, goals, programs, and so forth that we have; its just that I only hear about it when something went visibly wrong?