The devil is in the homeland security details or perhaps in charge of creating the homeland security "plan." Jon Corzine has been a U.S. Senator for some of the most critical times this country has dealt with homeland security issues. Now he wants to be Governor of the state of New Jersey where many potential terrorists could be sleeping. He, like John Kerry, says he has a plan. His backers also say the man has a plan and the other guy doesn't. They went so far as to hold a press conference yesterday with relatives of some September 11 victims and some "first responders" to tout the plan and attack Forrester for not having one.

The plan is:

1) name a cabinet level director of homeland security
2) create a "blue-ribbon" security commission
3) allocate funds based on risk

This is a plan? Hire a boss, pay for a study, and create a budget? That sounds more like a plan to create a plan to me. Yet he criticizes his opponent for having no plan. Is this what they teach in the Senate? Announce plans when you don't have any but make it sound like you do. This is strictly boiler-plate. It accomplishes nothing other than to state that you know a problem solving technique. You put someone in charge, study the problem, then create a budget to deal with the problem. But the man has been in the Senate for years. He's just got to do better than that.

Every person on Earth who has tackled a significant problem has taken this approach but the determining factor of whether they have been successful at accomplishing their goals never has been their ability to understand delegation 101. What matters is what is done after these things have been set in motion. If this were a job interview, can you imagine someone telling their potential boss that what they would do to solve a problem is limited to what they learned in their first year of college? No, that wouldn't fly. The potential boss would want to know that the interviewee had more experience than that. He'd want to know what, specifically, the potential hire can bring to the table to solve the problem. And if the guy had significant experience, he'd want to know what worked and what didn't.

Jim McGreevey had a plan. He hired a boss, his lover. He had some studying done and then presumably they created a budget which included a nice salary for the lover. How is the Corzine plan different than McGreevey's? Presumably Corzine would hire a woman for the position. That would be great until you realize that it would be a woman because Corzine seems to be a heterosexual American not because he values the input a woman would bring.

Mr. Corzine, if you really have a plan and not a plan to make a plan, let's hear it. You've been in places where you should have learned a thing or two in addition to these broad summary points. If you haven't, we don't need you. So, please tell us something we haven't heard before.