I think it is a combination of putting political hacks in top management positions in these agencies in combination with the "starve the beast" budget cuts.  These two dynamics are what are forcing many of the long term career employees of these agencies out.  What we the people end up getting is a smaller less competent government.

The conservatives say the want to model government after corporate America.  Nepotism is generally frowned upon at the highest levels of corporate America...they prefer expertise and ability when money is on the line.

That's why it's so important to  .  .  .  focus some attention on the system  .  .  .  .  Mark Schmitt

And how's that to be accomplished, pray tell?

Investigation and analysis must start in the Departments.  The media no longer cover Departments and Agencies -- there are virtually no reporters assigned to those beats.

The "fundies" -- Ford, Rockafeller, et al. -- who should have stepped into the breach, haven't.  [Oh, my.  We might look partisan.]

Thus far, the answer is, "It ain't gonna happen."

Right, that is actually a terrible slogan.  Something like, "We'll make government work for you" may be a bit better although could definitely be improved.

Most Americans could care less who is in charge of these various government departments.  They just want to know that if there is a national disaster people will be evacuated, provided with shelter, food and water.  They want to know that troops overseas have proper armor.  They want to know that high level officials aren't casually mentioning the name of a covert CIA agent to reporters.  In other words they want the government to do its job.

Democrats have a chance here to exploit those failures.  Instead of focusing on ideaology or wonkish policy issues, keep it simple.  Geroge Bush and the GOP do not care about making sure government works for you, they just care about making the government work their way.  We will make government work for you.

Well if it is the case Jay (and I don't doubt it is, nothing surpises me anymore) then I can see why the American economy isn't doing well.  If these guys pass up better qualified people to employ family and friends, who are lesser qualified, then they aren't very good business leaders in my book.

Judging only from various forms of fiction, it has always struck me that in various other nations--the United Kingdom, Germany, France, some African countries--the permanent bureaucracy, the class of civil servants is held in higher esteem and given greater credit for governmental successes and failures than in the United States. Here we do not seem to recognize the profession as equivalent to e.g. corporate management.

Remember back to Sept 11 and Guiliani talking about how many times in the past he had been part of training scenarios for city crises and emergencies.  He and his people had worked together, could rely on common experience and processes.  When they had to improvise on Sept 11 they did so based on experience. Thank goodness


DHS should have run some serious "drills" with all the players and Chertoff leading if that was to be his role.  If this Admin. was going to have a heavy WH presence then they had to play in the drill too.  The drill we know about was not serious, at least from reports.  Drill results have to be more than paper, they need to lead to real changes. 


Listen to yourself here.  You talk about how the MAYOR of New York had trained for emergency scenarios in that city so that when 9/11 happened he was ready. Then in the case of Katrina you skip over two layers of government and say it was Chertkoff's fault that he didn't practice.  Where is Ray Nagin or Gov. Blanco? 

I don't know where anyone gets the idea that "More Bureaucracy, Please" is my idea of a CAMPAIGN SLOGAN. It is certainly not. It's just a slightly ironic title for a post that makes the point that a respected, professional group of sub-managers with some autonomy are key to making agencies work, and that trying to control these agencies like marionettes from the White House is a recipe for disaster, and is even more significant than the specific qualifications of top people like Chertoff and Brown.

I think the issue of centralized, autocratic control from the White House might have some political salience, but it would take some work to craft the message.

But not everything has to make a good slogan. Some things are just the right thing to do.

Disclaimer: A longer version of this post also appears in response to Reed Hundt's "Not Too Personal" post. One additional factoid: mine is a reasonably well-informed rant. I spent 5 years as lawyer in the Clinton Justice Dept (non-appointee but worked with tons of 'em).

The Brown drama is just the latest chapter in the fiasco that is the constant display of this Administration's contempt for the Executive branch. It has employed a brilliant termite-like strategy to destroy the executive branch from within by getting rid of the careerists who know how the government is supposed to be run -- by moving them to marginal positions, forcing them out, or making early retirement far more attractive than continuing to sojourn in hell -- outsourcing whatever they could, and enriching their friends at every turn.

This is the Admin. that brought you Attorney General John Ashcroft who couldn't beat a dead man in a Senate race, who held prayer services daily at the Department of Justice and who hid an art deco statue of Justice behind a curtain because her breast was exposed. Succeeding Ashcroft in the top law enforcement post was Al Gonzales, who thinks the Geneva Convention is quaint, and who has no prior criminal law experience -- other than his consistent failure to provide then Gov. Bush any counsel about death row prisoners whose sentences should have been commuted.

Then there's Brown. This is the Administration that denounces affirmative action as "quotas" and "preferences," right? Yet with Brown, you could not find someone who more perfectly embodies everything they claim to detest about affirmative action.  Kinda reveals their true issue with a/a ... it's not whether the woman or the person of color is qualified, it's that that woman or person of color is taking up the slot where their unqualified guy could be! 

The Administration has two problems with bureacracy that combined to create the perfect storm that is this Katrina debable:  1) their contempt for careerists, and their mistaken belief that they can do what the bureacrats do as well or better ... how many politicals were roosting at FEMA?  4? 5? at the most senior level there were too many politicals and not enough careerists; 2) they distrust and suspect the motives/motivations of the careerists, so they keep them way out of the loop.  This has happened to some greater or lesser degree in previous Administrations, but not to the extremes to which this Admin. takes it, which is why there has been a huge outflow of careerists from the federal bureaucracy, and why we'll be paying a price for that for years to come.

If the Executive Branch, like the Army, runs on its stomach, the Bush Admin. has subjected it to stomach stapling, and the body is no longer able to derive enough nourishment to fulfill its basic functions.  Hence the need for life support, or in Gov. Blanco's case:  James Lee Witt. 

In important ways, Bush embodies mediocrity and speaks for expedient authoritarianism.  Like it or not, these are core aspects of his political appeal.  A strong source of his political support are  angry white males, who went to college, but did not graduate; another source of political support are mediocre, greedy corporate executives, whose primary purpose in life is securing their own high incomes and status, at the expense of lesser humans among their employees and customers.

It would be nice if "good government" had a constituency, as it did in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, when the Civil Service and some key Federal Agencies were established.  It would be nice, if more people, especially among politicians and leaders, cared about efficiency -- if it were more urgent and less boring and the leaders had both the imagination and the formative experiences to have some sense of the consequences of their actions.

Calls for better performance, however, appear to fall on deaf ears.  Democrats are resigned; independents mostly do not pay any attention; Republicans are living in an alternative universe.  Bush has not found Osama Bin Laden; Bush has started a war, he cannot win; Bush's Iraqi Reconstruction has failed miserably, Bush turned record surpluses into record deficits in a matter of hours.  The country's infrastructure is decaying; wages are stagnating, while corporate profits soar; health care costs skyrocket, the trade deficit widens, but the very wealthy are doing quite well, thank you.

Personally, I'd be ready for class warfare, but most people seem to be willing to regard stagnating wages, increasing income volatility, rising health care costs to be mysteries, rather than policy consequences.  I'd be ready for "taking back the government", but, hey, that slogan didn't win Howard Dean anything.  Bush's determination to suspend Davis-Bacon so construction workers can be paid less that $9/hour, and to spend $200 billion with Halliburton, Bechtel and the like will provide a spectacle of corruption.  Will anyone care?  Will any of Bush's supporters -- the poor, religious types, who also follow fake televsion preachers, or the rich parasitical suits in giant corporations, to take two stereotypical examples -- care?

Bush leads those, who want mediocrity and expedient authoritarianism, and those things are not compatible with administrative efficiency, which requires deliberation and intelligence and some degree of genuine meritocracy.  His polls are low, but he's not running for anything.  We're pretty much screwed, is how I see it.