The Wall Street Journal:

The Flint, Michigan, water crisis began in April 2014. This week, two years later, President Obama stood before a crowd of Flint residents and said: “I’ve come here to tell you that I’ve got your back, that we’re paying attention.”

And people wonder why Bernie Sanders is doing so well.

This being Barack Obama, he went on, embellishing his commitment to the people of Flint: “I will not rest, and I’m going to make sure that the leaders at every level of government don’t rest until every drop of water that flows to your home is safe to drink and safe to cook with and safe to bathe in, because that’s part of the basic responsibilities of a government in the United States of America.”

It’s worth parsing that last sentence about clean water being a basic responsibility “of a government in the United States of America.”

A government? Which government? Flint’s, or Michigan’s, or Barack Obama’s government in Washington?

After two years, what we know about this water crisis is that governments indeed failed at the local, state and federal level. That may have something to do with why the presidential campaign is overflowing, from right to left, with the idea that government is “failing” in virtually every imaginable respect. So maybe Mr. Obama has touched on something important, to wit: Why is it that government, whether in Flint or Washington, is in a failed state?

It looks to us as if Mr. Obama sensed that the narrative of the Flint failure was turning against his view of government, so he decided it was necessary to reframe the problem. He told the Flint residents that their crisis was the result of “a larger issue,” which was a certain mindset toward government. “It’s a mindset,” Mr. Obama said, “that believes that less government is the highest good no matter what.”

No matter what? No one believes that. The anger coursing through the electorate now is over a government that doesn’t seem to be able to do its job—no matter what.

The Flint water crisis is a case study in government that has become a morass of conflicting regulations and authorities, which in turn ensures that instead of responsibility or accountability—at any level—the agents of government spend their time buck-passing.

At congressional hearings in March, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy bucked it over to the state of Michigan, which had given her people “confusing, incomplete and incorrect information.” And so EPA staff was “unable to understand the problem” until it was too late.

But the EPA Region 5 administrator who later resigned, Susan Hedman, told Congress at that hearing she didn’t intervene in September 2015 for fear the Michigan Attorney General might sue her agency.

Worth noting here is the Clean Water Rule that Mr. Obama waved into existence in May, and with which the EPA now claims federal dominion over ditches and prairie potholes. But for Flint’s purposes, the more relevant directive is the 1991 federal Lead and Copper Rule, which gave EPA authority to control lead and copper in drinking water. Scientists have been urging a clarifying revision of that rule for the last decade. The update isn’t expected until sometime in 2017.

As to Ms. Hedman’s fear of being sued by Michigan, maybe she had a point. Another recent Obama directive, the Clean Power Plan, is creating tension with the states and has made state officials defensive about their turf.

In Mr. Obama’s telling, Flints happen because of a “corrosive attitude” that forces us to “underinvest” in pipes, bridges and roads. That is, any government failure is due to a lack of funding. And the opposite: Spend more and government failure goes away.

A counter-view would be that “we” underinvest in better infrastructure because entitlement spending has first claim on so much of the revenue taxpayers send government, at every level. In Flint, pensions and retiree health benefits consumed one-third of the city’s budget.

The default solution, for Mr. Obama, is that Washington’s rainbow pot can be expanded to pay for Flints everywhere. This is what he means by, “I’ve got your back.” The prudent might slip a hand around to their back pocket.

Last week a supposed conservative claimed the state needs to invest more in its roads. The counterargument is that (1) road construction costs are inflated by the prevailing-wage law, and (2) the state spends tax dollars that are supposed to go to roads to non-roads such as bike trails and mass transit. Near Presteblog World Headquarters the state is spending more than $600,000 to pave (an impermeable surface, of course) and light (with non-solar lights) a bike trail.