I tend to heap a lot of criticism on TIME magazine?s Joe Klein, though he occasionally merits kudos.
His latest column deserves a little of both. Klein does a good job outlining some key problems linked to both Democratic politicians and the nature of government bureaucracy itself:
Democrats tend to be more interested in legislating than in managing. They come to office filled with irrational exuberance, pass giant fur balls of legislation ? stuff that often sounds fabulous, in principle ? and expect a stultified bureaucracy, bereft of the incentives and punishments of the private sector, to manage it all with the efficiency of a bounty hunter. This has always been the strongest conservative argument against government activism.
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And then there is the nature of the bureaucracy itself. Three types of people tend to seek government work: idealists, those looking for sinecures and those who want to build lucrative private-sector careers based on their knowledge of government regulations. All three types present problems. There is a pretty good, but not overpowering, reason government workers are hard to fire: they need to be protected from political pressure. But that protection inevitably produces regulators who, as in a recent notorious case at the Securities and Exchange Commission, spend more time watching porn than riding herd on Wall Street. Too many of their colleagues who are not watching porn are building expertise that will enable them to beat the regulatory system when they exit the revolving door into private finance. Even the idealists, who are prominent in places like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), can cause trouble if they are naive and inflexible in their enforcement of rules and regulations.
Many of us would react to these insights by deciding that government bureaucracy ought to be avoided as often as possible.
Klein can?t quite bring himself to that conclusion. Instead he calls for increased activity among the watchdogs within government. For example, ?the stunning absence of corruption in the disbursement of stimulus funds is attributable, in large part, to Vice President Biden?s vigilance.? Uh-huh.
