DHS avoids posting a new idiot light

Remember the color-coded warning system for the terrorist threat index? Just as pawn shops have three balls hanging outside, for the first few years of its existence the Homeland Security Department featured on its homepage the threat index. Most of the time DHS hung out the middling yellow, rarely red for “severe,” or green for “low.”

Partly because it didn’t really convey meaningful information, and partly because it was associated with the Bush administration, the Obama crew wiped away the color code.

Apparently the color-code idea didn’t disappear easily. A recent Associated Press story reports that when DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson asked for an idea to signal border security conditions, career staff came up with, by golly, a color code system — red-yellow-green.

When you know something is a bad idea, but you want to avoid a bureaucratic snarl, you do what Johnson did — hire a consultant. The Institute for Defense Analysis politely said, “DHS should learn from its own history and avoid repeating this error.” Johnson buried the whole incident and the obligatory report until the AP asked about it.

The color code went the way of other notable government displays, such as the blue eagle of the failed National Industrial Recovery Act. Had the eagle been red, it could easily have been mistaken for something Soviet.

Signs and displays often linger long past the reality that inspired them. My neighborhood still has faded “Neighborhood Watch” signs here and there of uncertain origin or meaning. As in most of American suburbia, only people with dogs actually walk outside. In 20 years of walking our dogs, I have yet to see a suspected burglar. Maybe the Lexus people gliding by keep an eye out. We do have a coyote that lurks at night. Shortly after I first spotted him, the county, or the city, or the parks commission — somebody — put up a little diamond-shaped  “coyote habitat” sign in the playground.

At a certain intersection in Massachusetts there’s an old sign, “Greyhound Track,” with an arrow pointing down the street in the direction of a long-defunct racing facility.

After AASHTO decommissioned Route 66 in 1985, many signs remained for a while, but they’ve all been purloined by the road’s fervent enthusiasts.

The big difference with the color-coded threat warning system is this: The threat still exists. But  a phenomenon like the level of danger from terrorists in the United States defies quantifying. It encompasses too many variables to express as a single color. If intelligence, law enforcement and Homeland Security officials somehow could share enough data and come up with a real threat, it would be so localized  that a national signal still would be meaningless.

The color-code system was the equivalent of your car’s check-engine idiot light. Mine happens to be lit at the moment. The engine isn’t overheating, and I checked the crankcase to find it full of oil. Now what?

Johnson nixed a new color-code system. It’s a case of where doing nothing proved superior to the do-something-do-anything mentality.

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