Today President Obama meets with his national-security team, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Many, including Jonah, have said it’s time for her to go.

The Department of Homeland Security is a mess, it has been one since its inception, and it is likely to be that way for a long time to come. One reason for this is that DHS is a whole bunch of pre-existing agencies with really different duties all mushed together because they all have some connection to the ever-evolving threat of terrorism: The Secret Service, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, ICE, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Transportation Security Agency.

People who have a good working knowledge of how all of those agencies operate are few and far between. Anyone brought in to run the whole Byzantine structure is going to have a learning curve, and a steep one in some areas. Napolitano was picked because she was a border-state governor who presumably knew some things about border security.

Each one of those agencies is filled with good employees and bad employees, and the good, diligent ones are hampered by the inherent resistance to change pervasive in all bureaucracies. There are those at DHS because they love the work, who do it with passion and dedication, and grasp its importance; others are there to punch the clock until they can collect a pension. I’m sure many of us have had pleasant or relatively painless experiences with TSA employees, and we’ve had times where we’ve been endlessly hassled because we left a toothpaste tube in our carry-on bag. See Peggy Noonan’s column, “If Cattle Flew.”

The job of DHS Secretary might be impossible to do exceptionally well; at the very least, it requires someone who is a tireless reformer, constantly demanding accountability and not letting things slide. Bureaucracies often have time on their side. Secretaries of federal agencies usually only serve a few years; for the rank-and-file, this is where they’ll be spending their careers, for decades to come.

To improve the performance of a large bureaucracy, a leader has to be willing to ruffle feathers, to be a bit of the bull in the china shop, and to have vehement allergic reactions to the usual BS excuses. Two examples that come to mind are Rudy Giuliani in his early years as mayor of New York City and Michelle Rhee’s current effort to reform Washington, D.C.’s schools. Unresponsive bureaucracies are not used to being called unresponsive bureaucracies, and they resent it when it comes from their own leader.

Napolitano’s initial remarks screamed the slogan of the bureaucracy – “It’s not our fault, we did our jobs.” Napolitano appears to honestly think her department deserves a gold star because it informed the other planes and airports quickly after the incident on the Detroit flight. By that standard, the system largely worked on 9/11. We didn’t set up TSA and DHS to inform others of attacks quicker; we set them up to prevent attacks.

Should Napolitano go? Only if she gets replaced with a serious reformer, hell-bent on accountability and fearless about confrontation; otherwise, we’re replacing one longtime party stalwart giving rote speeches with another. I suppose it’s possible Obama could find a Giuliani or a Rhee for DHS, but I wouldn’t count on it.