Sacred cows and hamburgers.

The United States exploits every opportunity to drum up business for itself. This is not hyperbole; the United States' reputation for being a place for doing business can be witnessed in the efforts it has taken to promote  its own tourism industry even while it is issuing travel advisories to its citizens to avoid certain parts of the world. The irony is lost on the Cabinet Secretary for East African Affairs, Commerce and Tourism and her counterpart in Sports, Culture and the Arts, who have accompanied a "strong" government delegation to Washington, D.C., to participate in the annual Smithsonian Folk Life festival.

The United States has advised its citizens that they travel to Kenya at their own risk. But it invites Kenyans to "come and showcase your culture" at a street festival. Kenya is not the only invitee; the festival's website indicates that at least fifty countries will participate. Kenya and the other participants are persuading themselves that they will persuade the visitors to the festival to visit and thus guarantee tourists to our shores. In fact Kenya is promoting the United States' tourism industry - unless Kenya is represented at the festival by ghosts and US lobbyists.

Uhuru Kenyatta's undiminished faith that Cabinet Secretaries can perform miracles is baffling. In many democracies it is usually the finance minister who is seen as a miracle worker and in Kenya Henry Rotich fits that bill amply. Every other member of the Cabinet is seen as a parasite, even the man in charge of the safety of the state. In Mr Rotich, President Kenyatta has a competent technocrat who will do his best to steer a non-partisan path in the roiling waters of public finance. That is how it should be and it is time that President Kenyatta lost the rose-tinted glasses regarding the other members of his Cabinet.

The Cabinet may be made up of highly accomplished individuals who have made their mark, bar the likes of Balala, Kambi and Ngilu. (Though Mrs Ngilu has shaken up the political world more times than even the President himself.) But this alone is not sufficient to adopt a watch-and-see posture regarding their performance. Mr Kenyatta is privy to internal assessments of his Cabinet; they are as unflattering as can be imagined. Those like the Cabinet Secretary for Sports, Culture and the Arts can be forgiven because their dockets, quite frankly, have always been treated like red-headed step-children. The one for East African Affairs, Commerce and Tourism cannot be cut any slack; her continued missteps ensure that Kenya falls further and further behind its competitors. In tourism alone, two decades of steady-as-she-goes policies all but guarantee that the sun has well and truly set on the Kenyan tourism industry; if there is to be a new dawn, Mrs Kandie must burn down the whole public service mindset regarding tourism and start afresh.

This hesitation to take bold steps is reflected in the manner all ministries are run and how public policies are crafted. Mr Ole Lenku inherited a house of snakes when he became Interior Cabinet Secretary. Instead of bringing mongooses to take on the snakes, he backed away slowly and he now gives them a nice rodent treat every so often so that they don't turn on him. Mr Kaimenyi inherited an education sector that was reeling from the hot-and-cold changes wrought in swift succession by William Ruto and Sam Ongeri. Even sceptics and enemies agree that if Mr Ruto's reforms had been seen through, the changes in Kenya's education sector would have either ended in total success or utter tragedy. The point is, Mr Ruto made a bold move and perhaps his courage and charisma would have guaranteed success. Mr Kaimenyi seems to have a will made up entirely of minestrone. And on and on with the other members of the Cabinet.

Mr Kenyatta must act boldly; he still has time before he has to seriously start campaigning to keep the presidency. If it means mass firings, that is what he must do. If it means political rebalancing, that is not necessarily a bad thing. But he cannot allow Cabinet Secretaries to be seen as sacred cows. In certain parts of the world, sacred cows make the best hamburgers.