Politico Magazine, a glossy version of Politico, seeks to deliver “really big takes on big subjects holding leaders in Washington and beyond accountable.” Their latest really big take: President Obama’s assassination might be the only way to reform the incompetent U.S. Secret Service.

Over the past few days, the Washington Post has detailed the agency’s failure to protect Obama and his family from flying bullets, a rampaging intruder, and an armed ex-convict. Readers of these increasingly shocking reports might be tempted, especially after the resignation of Secret Service director Julia Pierson, to blame the Secret Service. But Politico Magazine, in its ongoing effort to hold Washington leaders accountable, has identified a different culprit: President Obama. Here is columnist Ronald Kessler:

Agents tell me it’s a miracle an assassination has not already occurred. Sadly, given Obama’s colossal lack of management judgment, that calamity may be the only catalyst that will reform the Secret Service.

So, in Kessler’s framing of the Secret Service’s incompetence, Obama ... would be responsible for his own (hypothetical) murder? Leaving aside the culpability of Obama’s would-be assailant, or the increased number of threats against the president compared to his predecessors, most people would think the Secret Service would at least share some of the blame.

But this is Politico, and as Kessler’s opening paragraph indicates, there is no controversy that Politico cannot pin on Obama and his lack of leadership:

As if on cue, each time headlines reveal a new Secret Service scandal, President Obama and his White House defend the agency.

As if on cue. So Politico Magazine, in the long Politico tradition, has summoned the specter of some pre-existing controversy involving Obama in order to manufacture a fresh Politico narrative, or meta-narrative, about Obama’s failure to lead. And optics and controversies and storylines. In the swirling void of Politico LLC, these are what every story is about.