1115.org

Even the rare administration mea culpas come leavened with a healthy dose of Bush-sh*t.

AP’s Michael J. Sniffen wants us to applaud Maura Harty:

The current passport mess is rare among government foul-ups: A top federal official has publicly taken the blame and expressed regret.

“Over the past several months, many travelers who applied for a passport did not receive their document in time for their planned travel. I deeply regret that,” says Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty, who is in charge of U.S. passports. “I accept complete responsibility for this.”

Even well-trained do-as-you’re-told-ers may find it difficult to play along with this one.

First, there are — as usual with this administration — absolutely no consequences for accepting complete responsibility. Harty hasn’t, for example, tendered her resignation in atonement. The phrase “taking complete responsibility” has now been debased to the point it should just be retired from public use till at least 2009.

Second, here’s the size and scope of the shambles:

By summer, more than 2 million people were waiting for passports; half a million had waited more than three months since applying for a document that typically was ready in six weeks.

The massive backlog destroyed summer vacations, ruined wedding and honeymoon plans and disrupted business meetings and education plans. People lost work days waiting in lines or thousands of dollars in nonrefundable travel deposits.

Members of Congress were inundated with pleas from constituents for help. Requests to lawmakers soared from dozens a year to hundreds a month in many offices.

No doubt someone you know personally has been personally affected. If not, a bunch of horror stories can be found here.

Harty’s excuse explanation for this sorry state of affairs — delivered with a perfectly straight face, and a very sincere one too, by all appearances — is that passport applications this year have been running at 10% more than predicted. I kid you not, that’s actually what she’s offering as the source of the problem:

Harty’s office consulted with the Homeland Security Department and the travel industry, analyzed historical trends and hired the consulting company BearingPoint to conduct a study. Based on all this research, it projected that the number of passports issued would rise from 12.1 million in 2006 to 16.2 million this year.

‘We miscalculated,” Harty told Congress. Her office now estimates it is on track to issue 17.7 million this year.

That’s actually not even 10% more than predicted.

It’s really not clear why Smiffen chooses to start his story by inviting us to applaud Harty (unless it’s cunningly concealed irony). Because here’s Smiffen’s explanation for how the prediction came to be off the mark: “The department could have reached its 16.2 million figure by adding BearingPoint’s midrange estimate that the new rules alone would produce 4.1 million new applications” to last year’s 12.1 million applications. Yes, “that left no allowance for normal annual growth, which has averaged 18.5 percent for the past three years.”

Ah, but Harty’s I-take-complete-responsibility statement has already anticipated such unfair criticism of predictive technique deficiencies:

“An awful lot of people have applied who don’t need passports yet” because they are driving to Canada or Mexico, Harty said. The government’s media efforts “didn’t get the word out who actually needed a passport and who didn’t.”

Many other people are applying even though they have no travel plans - “something that we’ve never seen before” - possibly because of the national immigration debate, Harty said. “The passport is becoming something like a national ID card.”

“People are concerned they need to prove they are citizens,” for employment and to receive federal benefits, she said.

There also was a huge, unanticipated surge in applications - 5.5 million in January, February and March.

Maura, come off it already! Actual applications were not even 10% more than predicted. That’s not an awful lot of extra people. That’s not a huge, unanticipated surge in applications. In many circles — those where people routinely draw up prudent plans to cater to predicted demand — it is normal to scale your operation so that demand 10% higher than expected can be taken in stride without hopelessly derailing everything.

Some enterprising reporter should investigate, and report on, what kind of raise Condi Rice’s State Department gives Maura Harty next year. I’ve got $20 that says it will be more than the 3.5% raise for the military that Democrats proposed, and Bush said he would veto as being excessive.