Horse is to Carriage as Politician is to Bureaucrat

I like Tom Friedman, but I have to disagree with this portion of his column this week on the Bolton appointment (saying that Bolton might improve the UN bureaucracy, but wouldn't work well to create support for the US):

"In short, I don't much care how the U.N. works as a bureaucracy; I care about how often it can be enlisted to support, endorse and amplify U.S. power. That is what serves our national interest. "

What Tom misses is that a politician is nothing without a bureaucracy to lead, or rather, a politician without a bureaucracy to lead, or aspire to lead, is a demagogue. Consider Arafat, who never had an effective bureaucracy in the Palestinian Authority. In the long run, if the UN doesn't work, its moral authority vanishes, and the value of its support becomes nil. The UN doesn't have to be a world government, but it has to be effective at what it tries to do.

A bureaucracy, like a carriage, both empowers and constrains the politician. It permits the victorious politician to deliver on his promises, thus enforcing accountability. It keeps the politician from galloping cross country in pursuit of every will o'wisp, thereby promoting stability. So the politician needs the bureaucracy.

Likewise, the bureaucrat needs the politician. A problem with the UN is that it doesn't have enough politics and enough effective bureaucracy. Without campaigns and elections, the balance between the UN civil service and politicians is skewed, so the bureaucracy loses its power. To change metaphors, without the exercise of doing things, and of changing course at the direction of its political leaders, a bureaucracy becomes flabby and self-absorbed.

I've no affection for Bolton, but if his appointment would shoot down the black helicopter myths, I'd applaud it.

In Praise of Administrative Professionals

This week used to be Secretaries Week, which benefited the florists and restuarants of DC as each office unit took its secretary out to lunch and/or gave flowers. It's now been renamed Administrative Professionals Week. It's part of the inflation of titles and ranks that Paul Light highlights in government, though I suspect it's prevalent elsewhere. (How many vice presidents does a bank have, anyway?) Just a couple thoughts:

1 The impact of word processing, which meant that professional employees (in itself an example of title inflation--most such government employees are not professionals in the sense that 19th century doctors and lawyers aspired to) did their own typing and thereby reduced the number of clerk-typists and secretaries.

2 The importance of secretaries as an upward mobility route. While it's declined as more and more people go to college, it used to be a way for the smart and hard working to show their stuff and advance. (The 9-11 report observed that the FBI found many of its analysts in these fields, which unfortunately meant that analysts didn't have the prestige within the organization of the special agents.)

Bicycles and Slippery Slopes

What would we do without metaphors? Eugene Volokh has written a law article on "slippery slopes" and now Daniel Drezner mentions something that seems the mirror image: "bicycle theory". Here's Drezner's link

"The 'end of Europe' claim by Prodi is an extreme version of the 'bicycle theory' of international integration, which says that if there is any slowdown in integration, the process starts to wobble like a slow bicycle, eventually toppling under its own weight. This line was also used after the Maastricht accord was signed in the early nineties. I suspect that warnings like Prodi's will, if anything, further turn off people against what elites tell them about the European Union."

A Google search seems to link it to Fred Bergsten. The slippery slope is, in my telling, the idea that a small step forward will result in a long trip to an unwanted destination; the bicycle is the idea that an interruption to progress forward will result in a short trip to the ground.

Ideas, For What They're Worth--II

Continuing along the lines of feedback, I'd suggest highway radar/display signs that show the average speed of vehicles on the highway.

Rationale: in Lake Wobegon, everyone drives faster than the average. I think there's a perception bias. First, I'd assume that the distribution of vehicle speeds on a highway is a skewed normal distribution, that is, there are very few vehicles going at or below the speed limit, and significant numbers going well above the speed limit. The peak of the curve is somewhere above the limit.

Second, assume you merge onto the highway and drive at your normal speed, maybe 65 mph in a 55 mph zone. You're going to be passed by vehicles going 70, 80 and 90; you're going to pass vehicles going 55. I suspect the speeders are going to make the biggest impact on you. You may well believe that the average speed is 70. But that may not be true. A display setup would show the truth.

(This idea is a takeoff from some research that supposedly showed that college students believe binge drinking is more prevalent than it actually is, resulting in a greater tendency to drink. I say "supposedly" because I've also seen a challenge to the research and don't know for sure what the status is.)

Ideas, For What they're Worth-I

Like most people, I have these great ideas (I think so, at least) that never go anywhere. On the off chance that some Google will come across these pages, I'm going to write them up and post them.

My first one--the local HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes on Interstate 95 tend to attract criticism from people who are stuck in stop-and-go traffic in the regular lanes and look over to see cars whizzing by in the HOV. They protest--the lanes aren't being fully used, so why not open them to everyone?

Using the principle that feedback is often good, I'd suggest a traffic counter/display sign over each set of lanes. The count would be a running tally of the cars passing the point during the last hour, multiplied by an occupancy factor. For HOV-3, multiply each car times 3; for the regular lanes, multiply times 1. This means the signs would compare the effectiveness of the lanes in carrying people. Thus the signs would show whether or not the HOV lanes are working as they're supposed to.

Power Line

John Hinderacker at Power Line attacks a Democratic rally against privatizing Social Security on Capitol Hill. I quarrel with this:

"This really is demagoguery at its worst. Federal employees already have a private contribution plan."

The Federal system is essentially a 401K on top of Social Security, which is how it was sold to us back in the 1980's. The existence or non-existence of 401K's doesn't support the "carve-out" approach to private accounts.

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Why a Compromise on Judicial Nominees Makes Cents

If the controversy over appellate court nominees is largely fueled by special cause lobbyists, then a compromise makes sense. From the point of the view of the interest groups, successful use of the nuclear option would remove controversies in the future. You'd only be able to lobby the Senate to get a majority, much harder than the current situation. That means you'd have less occasion to send junk mail to your supporters, rousing their fervor. The only downside to the compromise is the story of the boy who cried "wolf"; it would tend to undermine credibility. But damage to credibility can be repaired over time, so rationally, both sides should agree on a compromise in order to preserve the issue for future fund raising drives.

Reasons I'm a Liberal (Revised)

I'll add as I think of them. Here's a pretty good summary, albeit a bit bloodless.

1 I'm more concerned about incorporating the Golden Rule in our institutions than about erecting stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.

2 Like Julian Simon, I believe people are the greatest natural resource, so if we have to throw money at problems, let's aim towards the schools, not the military.

3 Like Madison, I believe diversity is essential to a republic's survival. The more people of diverse opinions and interests the better.

4 I believe in the power of people, working together, to accomplish good, whether the organization is a charity, a religion, a corporation, or a government. As Benjamin Franklin said: "we must all hang together or we will each hang separately", an organization accomplishes more than individuals.

5 I don't think it's soft-headed to understand a person before judging them.

6 I don't think it's soft-hearted to strive for everyone to be well, and well-fed, well-housed, well-educated, and at peace.

Poor Harry Blackmun--Juan Non-Volokh on David Brooks Column, Revised

Juan Non-Volokh comments on David Brooks column, blaming Roe v. Wade for partisanship on justices.


The partisan divisions over judges are not Harry's fault. Blame Ike. He picked Earl Warren, who led the Court into what conservatives saw as upsetting hallowed tradition (Brown, Baker v. Carr), favoring Communists, coddling criminals (Gideon and Miranda), removing religion from public life (Engel), etc. etc. I believe all of Volokh.com are too young to remember those days, but "Impeach Earl Warren" was a war cry of the right, dating back to the late 1950's. Warren was even under attack by the ABA leadership (then a stalwart of the right).

That was part of the context for LBJ's selecting his successor (Warren got cute, too cute, by resigning in 1968 dependent on a successor, thus giving LBJ the chance to name the successor--LBJ named Abe Fortas):

This source provides a summary of Warren's career, including this discussion of the result:

" On July 11 the Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings. Shortsightedly, Fortas accepted the Judiciary Committee's invitation to testify. He was the first CJ nominee in history ever to do so. Warren had declined to do so, letting his record speak for him. Senators could not impeach Warren, but they whiplashed Fortas for cronyism with LBJ and drew him into a discussion and defense of several Warren Court decisions, many of which were decided before Fortas had joined the Court. On September 13, the embattled and embarrassed Fortas wrote Mississippi Senator Eastland, the anti-Warren Court Judiciary Committee chairman, that he would no longer testify. The full Judiciary Committee finally approved the Fortas nomination 11-6, moving it to the Senate floor. A coalition of southern Democrats and Republicans, urged on by Nixon, began a filibuster which could not be stopped by sufficient votes for cloture. Fortas wrote to LBJ requesting that his nomination be withdrawn. Immediately LBJ complied with deep regret. Everybody then besieged LBJ with a new nominee, but the proud old Texan refused to name a Fortas substitute. "

Rick Shenkman at POTUS writes:

" Any number of turning points could be selected. One that stands out was the 1968 fight to stop LBJ from naming Abe Fortas chief justice of the Supreme Court. Nothing like it had ever been seen in American history by one measure. For the first time ever opponents staged a filibuster to block a president's nomination to the Supreme Court."

The Post covers the Fortas filibuster here:

Ralph Luker at Cliopatria discusses Blackmun and incidentally agrees that Warren and the Fortas fight were keys.

The Roe decision was significant because it was the Burger court, thus undermining any belief Republican appointees would reverse the direction of the Warren court was undermined, and it was a hot button issue for a new group. Where the hardhats had seen the court as pinko, now their wives became involved.

Finally, Justice Scalia in the O'Connor/Breyer/Scalia discussion on C-Span traced the partisanship back "50 years", meaning for once he and I agree.

Agendas and Dog-Whistle Politics

Today sees William Safire discussing the origins of the phrase "dog-whistle politics", meaning messages that reach an intended audience but not others. And the Washington Post Outlook section has Jeffrey Birnbaum writing on "The Forces That Set the Agenda" " [warning, as of 2pm the link was faulty, giving only the title and not the text of the article]: "

In the grand scheme of things, Social Security isn't the nation's biggest fiscal problem. That's not my view. That's the assessment of Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Bush political appointee before he became head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, who says that looming financial calamities in Medicare and Medicaid are larger and more immediate worries in a strictly budgetary sense." He goes on to discuss the role of organizations like AARP in making Social Security a focus. Small businesses played a key role in the estate tax debate.

I see both as relating to David Broder's column on the judicial nominee fight (see my post here).

The common thread is the individualization of politics, retail politics. In the 1940's and 50's, there were 3 TV networks, a handful of radio stations, some national magazines like Readers Digest, Life, Time, Colliers and that was it. Politically there was big business with the NAM and the Chamber of Commerce, big labor with the AFL and the CIO, and big agriculture with the Farm Bureau and Farmers Union. Throw in a few membership organizations like Knights of Columbus, Elks, League of Women Voters, American Legion, AMA, and ABA and you had the major political players.

50 years later media has proliferated, the membership organizations have lost their dominance, and mail-based advocacy organizations have multiplied. The key to all this is the original bureaucratic organization, i.e, the Post Office, with junk mail and the computerization of data. The new organizations spend much less time socializing at local and state levels and much more time raising money through mailed appeals and targeted media--dog whistles. Both Robert Putnam ("Bowling Alone" and "Better Together: Restoring the American Community") and Theda Skocpol "Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life" have written on this theme. They convince me.

Because people learned how to use computers to develop mailing lists, they could create magazines targeted to niche audiences. They learned how to massage census data and commercial data to refine their advertisements and magazines. From there it was a short step to applying the tools to politics, creating advocacy organizations to support lobbyists on K Street. In my own area of agriculture, the dominance of the Farm Bureau has been challenged by all the commodity groups, each one organized around a crop. The politics of specialization works differently than the politics I was taught in the 50's and 60's. While we still have farm bills, much of the Congressional work is done through the appropriations process and amendments to "must pass" legislation, whether it's the budget reconciliation measures, emergency legislation responding to agricultural "emergencies", or whatever. You get the explosion of "earmarks" of money for projects that never went through peer review in the case of science or through the authorization process in the case of pork.

With specialized communications networks and organizations at their disposal, political operators can work outside the vision of the mainstream media, whether it's to agitate the waves over judicial nominees or to fight over social security when Medicare is really in much greater trouble.

Can blogging, or anything else, change this? Doubtful.