Trump Versus the Bureaucracy
20th December 2016
A lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Robert Behn, writes abut this as “the law of diminishing control: the larger any organization becomes, the weaker is the control over its actions exercised by those at the top.” He says bureaucrats speak of “residents” and “tourists”— the residents are the bureaucrats; the tourists are political appointees, just passing through. Or, Behn writes, a member of the permanent government refers to himself or herself as a “We Be” — as in, “We be here before you’re here. We be here after you’re here.”
Jerry Pournelle likes to say that the purpose of a civil service is to hire and pay government workers. Let’s see whether the Trumpster can make any progress in the face of The Great Sponge.