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The best thing any group of Republican senators has done in recent memory is chase Kimberly Cheatle down the hallway at the Republican National Convention last week.

The head of the Secret Service is an appropriate target for outrage, and if there were any doubt about it, she removed it with her infuriatingly non-responsive performance before the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

Cheatle should have been gone the night of the attempted Trump assassination, and now is a symbol of the incompetence and lack of responsibility that has undermined trust in our institutions.

Cheatle should have felt honor-bound to resign, and, failing that, President Biden should have felt honor-bound to fire her.

When she says that she's taking responsibility, she means it in the contemporary Washington sense — i.e., saying it insulates you from doing it.

If Donald Trump had been killed, she presumably would have been out instantly — at least, one hopes.

That he narrowly lived shouldn't benefit her: She doesn't get credit for Trump's providential turn of his head and the centimeter that saved the nation from catastrophe, and the Secret Service from a calamitous failure that would have brought eternal discredit to everyone involved.

What is it that makes Cheatle so indispensable?

Is she some unique talent? Is she pursuing some transformational agenda, besides the DEI stuff she's pushed?

Is she going to clean up what's wrong with the agency? If so, what exactly was she doing prior to this point?

Obviously, someone — anyone — not associated with a grotesque security failure in Butler, Pa. and not hated and distrusted now by half the country would be better suited to do it.

The Secret Service has an exalted place in the public imagination, thanks to numerous movies and TV shows and the very admirable professional duty of agents to risk their lives shielding a protectee.

That it, too, turns out to be a mediocre bureaucracy that on top of various scandals over the years can't even competently perform its most important task of protecting a former president and current presidential frontrunner is profoundly depressing.

Now we are in the inevitable cycle of excuse-making, evasion and contradictory information.

When asked at the hearing why security personnel weren't on the roof that the sniper used to shoot at Trump, Cheatle said law enforcement was supposed to provide over-watch, or observe it from above.

"There was a plan in place to provide over-watch, and we are still looking into responsibilities, and who was going to provide over-watch," she said.

Oh.

When asked who decided that the rooftop would be outside the Secret Service perimeter, she answered, "I don't have a specific person to identify for you."

OK.

When asked who approved the security plan for the rally, she couldn't say, either.

"You are full of s–t!" Rep. Nancy Mace bellowed after Cheatle sidestepped questions about whether the Secret Service had addressed the committee's demand for the names of all law enforcement personnel who worked the Butler Farm Show grounds on July 13.

When precision and credibility were called for, Cheatle could manage neither.

One follow-on effect of the Secret Service's failure in Butler, the full magnitude of which we are still learning, is to stoke conspiracy theories.

Think of it this way, though: If the choice is between believing the people entrusted with Trump's security in Butler were criminal masterminds or morons, which would you take?

There is no evidence of the former, but abundant evidence, growing by the day, for the latter.

In her opening statement to the committee, Cheatle said, "Thinking about what we should have done differently is never far from my thoughts."

As if that is remotely enough.

It would be a sign of institutional self-respect if the person in charge realized that having exacting standards means that she, too, should be held to them; that truly taking responsibility requires acting like it, not just talking about it; and that accountability at the highest level would send an important message within the Secret Service and without it.

Instead, the person in charge is Kimberly Cheatle.

She is, sad to say, truly a leader for our time.

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