I’m in the “winging it” camp with Derb, and as an old government hand, I can only smile and nod my head reading Yuval’s memories. Let me submit some more evidence — or, rather, steal some more evidence from our buddy Greg Pollowitz over at the media blog.

Jonah mentioned on Friday that the Obama administration’s Friday bad/embarrassing news dump included a curt two-liner by which DOJ agreed with the Bush position that alien enemy combatants held at the Bagram base in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights. This (correct) position has much of Obama’s base up in rebellion mode. But what is most stunning is that it came at around the same time that, as Greg details, Vice President Biden and CIA Director Panetta gave speeches braying about how just these sorts of Bush detention policies (that we follow in every war) were contrary to “our values” and would not be tolerated in the Obama administration.

Now, granted, the most disciplined, well-oiled message machine on the planet could not keep Biden reined in. But Panetta? How did he not know that DOJ was about to do something that would make his remarks look foolish and uninformed? I suspect it’s because they’re flying by the seat of their pants, especially when it comes to the many areas in which the political realities of governing are crashing into their irresponsible campaign rhetoric.