Mickey is still dissecting it. In part, he writes:

The New Cathartic Punching Bag Method: The loyal cabinet secretary is evasive and disingenuous, reflexively and ludicrously defending the bureaucracy he or she commands. This allows the secretary’s principal, the President, to win huge points with the voters for publicly contradicting and implicitly dressing down the idiot cabinet secretary. The President gets to look like a) he’s in charge and b) he’s our last hope for sanity.
The new strategy works especially well on issues, like terrorism, that the President can’t really distance himself from anyway. … P.S.: It’s important, for the Punching Bag strategy to work, that the cabinet secretary not accidentally begin to make sense. Rather, he or she needs to put forward the worst examples of bureaucratic mindlessness in order to give voters the greatest satisfaction upon seeing them demolished by the no-nonsense Commander in Chief.

Interesting. But isn’t it also important for the president to actually stay a no-nonsense commander-in-chief? The NCPBM works when dealing with Napolitano. But if Obama uses this tactic with, say, Holder, particularly if the terror trial turns into a fiasco, it will mean a total reversal of Obama’s whole approach to the War on Terror. This method works in this instance because of the specific nature of Napolitano’s screw-up, I don’t think it’s sustainable as a default mode of the administration.

Update: From a reader:

Take it from me, that “my employee is an idiot” excuse will only work for a manager once at most. After that the manager looks like an idiot for keeping someone like that on staff.