Has anyone been missing my acerbic wit and indomitable reasoning? Didn't think so, but just in case, now that I'm on holiday from my new job that consumes all my weekday time other than lunch hour, here's a column that impressed me on the Frontier flight to Seattle: Gossifying the Ossified.
I didn't know that 'ossified' was a real word, but it fits big-time as a description of federal bureaucracies.
"There are just 3,000 political appointees, compared with a civil service of 1.8 million workers, "many of whom," writes the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, "are impossible to fire." Presidential nominees take an average of eight months to be approved by Congress. Worse, many, if not most, career civil servants at middle and upper levels resist implementing policies they don't like and do their best to shape their own. Such bureaucrats often lean left -- because federal jobs attract people who believe in a missionary government and because Democrats controlled Washington almost continuously for a half-century.
(...)
The attitude of many top bureaucrats can be summed up thus: "This is 'my' agency. The politicals are only renting a room for a while. I can ignore them and subvert them. Eventually, they will leave, and I'll still be here doing the real policymaking."
But Goss appears to be a harbinger of change in the offing:
"Goss removed the head of clandestine operations. The No. 2 CIA official resigned, along with four other senior officials. The new director issued a memorandum, stating, "I also intend to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road. We support the administration and its policies in our work. As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."
But Glassman rightly insists that Bush not limit his reform action to one department. His next priority, as is mine, is the State Department.
"One of the first tasks of the newly nominated secretary, Condoleezza Rice, must be to lay down the law, Goss-style, at State. For help, I hope she'll take John Bolton as deputy. Bolton, now an undersecretary, is the architect of the Proliferation Security Initiative, which the Wall Street Journal said "has arguably been Colin Powell's most important achievement at State."
Bolton, who was earlier my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, has served in the executive branch for 16 years, and he's a brilliant bureaucratic navigator. If anyone can Gossify the ossified State Department, it's Bolton.
Indeed, the White House should put someone like Bolton in the No. 2 post of every department and key agency, with explicit responsibility for rooting out administration opponents and gaining control of policy. How to do that when bureaucrats have the equivalent of academic tenure? Make their lives miserable, transfer them or re-educate them. But don't leave them in place."
Good news on this front (despite its apparent predictability given Powell's resignation) is that Deputy Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage has tendered his resignation as well. In this case, the sight of rats fleeing the ship is not a sign that it's sinking, but that the rats' future there is doing so.
Posted by JohnGalt at November 25, 2004 11:56 AMWhy, yes, I was missing your posts but I know how the quotidian demands of employment can interfere with blogging.
I respect Secretary Colin Powell as much as any individual alive today. His autobiography blew me away when it came out. Even through the many many political differences I have had with him, I still respect the man and his achievements.
And yet, it is sad that the renegade State Department went four years under his direction with zero reform -- actually tacit acceptance from the top.
Go Dr. Rice -- she will have her hands full but I do think the President will devote some political capital to helping her bring this bunch into line. If things go well, we might lever off the UN scandals and get a little reform there as well.
It is incredibly refreshing that there now exists even a slight chance for that to happen. I quipped yesterday that the UN should be evicted from this country and their New York headquarters converted into the Multilateralism Holocaust Museum. "And here we have the office of the last Secretary General of the UN, under whose leadership the wayward body nearly subverted the very principle of objective international law."
Posted by: johngalt at November 26, 2004 10:51 AM