At the conservative Commentary, Peter Wehner offers a critical assessment of the federal administration that I think would be more apt for the municipal administration of Whitewater, Wisconsin:
Its policies are failing, its popularity is sinking, its excuses aren’t working, and its incompetence is showing. Yet the administration appears incapable of admitting – even to itself, even in quiet moments – that it has made mistakes, that it may be wrong, that it may be on the wrong track.
In cities and towns, I’d guess this kind of obstinacy is common — it requires considerable self-reflection, humility, and honesty to acknowledge a bad course.
(Nationally, Bill Clinton did so after the 1994 elections, and won re-election easily. Locally, there’s much too much rigidity and self-deception among bureaucrats and politicians for Clinton’s kind of reasonable response.)