Lurita Doan's 'New Groove'

Last May, POGO blogged about the firing of controversial General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan.  At the end of that post, we asserted that she wouldn't be gone for long.  Sure enough, this week brought news of a new high-profile gig for Doan: radio commentator with Federal News Radio WFED 1050 AM.

The news that Doan will broadcast a weekly 15-minute spot called "Leadership Matters" prompted a story in Federal Times that jokingly compared her to "shock jock" Howard Stern.

"I had a great time at the GSA," Doan told Federal Times.  "Now I've moved on.  This is my new groove."

Doan's radio segment will feature her views on the subject of government leadership.  Given her scandal-plagued tenure as GSA administrator, those views should certainly be quite interesting.  She promises that no topic, not even her well-known hostility toward inspectors general, will be off-limits.  (We wonder what, if anything, Doan will have to say about the forthcoming part two of POGO's investigation of IGs, which will address issues of IG accountability, performance and effectiveness.)

Doan explains her philosophy regarding government leadership in this op-ed column on the WFED web site:

[L]eadership matters. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Certainly, teams, committees and working groups are important--especially in a federal government as large as ours.

But, you can immediately recognize an organization, a plan, an idea that has a true leader at the helm because true leadership requires action.  And, action is a verb; action is movement; action means that things get done, even when the movement and the action makes people uncomfortable--because oftentimes status quo is the comfy armchair we like to sit in.

Leadership asks the question, "Why not?"

She had better warn her listeners not to ask the question, "How can we help our candidates?" at office meetings, or else they too will be smacked with a violation of the Hatch Act.

Given Doan's background as a successful government contractor and deep-pocketed Republican donor, we were somewhat surprised by this career change.  Some of her former GSA colleagues, however, were not.  One unnamed former colleague provided this zinger to Federal Times: "It's the perfect medium for Lurita; she's a great storyteller."

-- Neil Gordon

Comments

[KSBR disgusted]

I realize now there's ambiguity in my post. I truly mean that FCW went out of its way to be friendly, criticizing the GSA IG and Grassley and Waxman for any criticism of her majesty.
She left a trail of tears and unfulfilled promises in her wake.
Now we see FCW is in love with the nomination of Williams for GSA administrator. Jim's a good guy, but FCW wants to turn its blinders on the facts of the Sun matter and won't even deal with the continued plunge of DHS's USVISIT program on Williams' watch. Why not dig for some news once in a while, fellas?

[Saildocva]

As an SES who had the misfortune to deal with her, I can say that she put her agenda ahead of good government. We presented her with a plan to save billions of dollars, but it required moving 4-6 staff from other agencies to GSA to actually do the leadership and staffing work to help agencies achieve the goals. She did not question the program or plan - she merely turned it down saying "I didn't come to hire staff."

She was among the most rude of all the people I have ever met. She insisted on talking only to other politicals, made her total disdain of all career staff clear from day one. Many political appointees have been highly successful in leading career staff, just by treating them like normal human beings. She had to work hard to treat them so bad that they turned on her like they did. So if she is going to talk about leadership, everyone should pay close attention and then do the opposite. Or maybe the GSA staffer was right "she tells a good story".

[KSBR disgusted]

Against hot competition, Doan was one the absolute worst agency leaders that Bush appointed. Incompetent and political to a fault. Scared people with her darting mind and frequent craziness. Made no friends outside of GSA, including predictably, in the editorial suite at Federal Computer Week, which issued last Monday a fond soliloquy about her, but also wondered why the fascination with this unscrupulous, lying-to-Congress vamp. Many civil servants and companies breathed a sigh of relief when she left. FedNews radio takes itself down a peg or two by having Doan in their lineup.