Ladies and gentlemen, the Obama Administration.

Clear air and water and a stable environment seem like reasonable things. Do you think you lost control of the messaging? I’ve got to push back on that. You need to separate what happens inside the Beltway echo chamber here with what happens in the countryside. People expect their government to take care of them and their families. Not special interests, not highly paid lobbyists. This agency plays an important role that way. I understand that people need a villain, but this agency is not the villain. My belief has always been that you can have a clean and healthy environment and a thriving economy at the same time.

That’s Lisa Jackson, Obama’s administrator of the EPA. And she’s demonstrating the problem with the philosophy of the current leadership in Washington. They think Americans want to be treated like children, government bureaucrats acting like mommy and daddy.

Well, guess what? We don’t. The term “government-run health care” is an effective derogatory term — one fought by Democrats — for that reason. Americans don’t want the government running their sh*t. They want the government to effectively carry out its defined obligations.

In fact, our nation was founded on the principle that we don’t want other people running our crap for us — that we don’t want to be treated like children. We want to make our own decisions, determine our own destiny, and generally be left alone by bureaucrats in a far-away capital.

The current political leadership — and its accompanying bureaucratic cronies — doesn’t understand that. They think Americans are children who need to be cared for by Mommy and Daddy Government. They don’t understand what Americans expect from Washington.

Here’s a hint: We expect Washington to keep the nation’s secret military and diplomatic documents, you know, secret. If Washington can’t even do that, what makes these leaders think we want Washington running our health care and dinner menus?