In a report at Brookings William Galston makes a quixotic case for a major overhaul of government in the next administration. After presenting a historical list of how previous crises have resulted in governmental reform from the Articles of Confederation to Dodd-Frank, he outlines the Obama Administration’s efforts at institutional reform and its critique by Republicans. He continues by outlining a series of areas ripe for reform including the budget, overlapping even conflicting areas of federal responsibility, mistaken over-consolidation in other areas (DHS), and electoral reform.
A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?
I suppose that what he’s outlining is a best case scenario for a prospective Romney Administration. It is a chore for which I strongly suspect Mitt Romney is very well prepared. However, I find it hard to imagine that any of Mr. Galston’s ideas, much as I agree with them, will gain any traction. Over the period of the last three quarters of a century the trend under Republican administrations and Democratic ones has been in the direction of greater consolidation of power in Washington. Every administration has acted to reward its supporters and punish its opponents. I don’t see that as a formula for wide-reaching or even incremental government institutional reform.
Contrariwise, I think the prospects for governmental reform are much stronger from the bottom up, from local governments to state governments. Just as ever-increasing wages, benefits, and influence for public employees had implications for how the business of local government has been conducted so will the ever-decreasing wages, benefits, and influence that necessity is just now beginning to impose and of which the string of municipal bankruptcies in California is only the first harbinger.
I would agree that Romney is actually the better guy if you want to reorganize government, but I am not sure it makes any difference. He is beholden to the far right and his own special interest groups. He has made too many pledges that are inconsistent with effective reorganization. I also suspect that, assuming patterns hold, we may see filibusters break new records again. I could be wrong about this as the Dems have not usually been quite so cohesive, but during the first W term they hung together fairly well.
Steve
I don’t think it much matters who is President. The Congress won’t allow substantial changes to the status quo.
A President will only get actual power to dictate an agenda in the case of a national “game changing” crisis – for FDR it was the depression and then WWII, for GW Bush it was 9/11. I think sooner or later that will happen and then whoever is President will have an opportunity to cut through the usual Congressional BS. Until then, I don’t expect anything beyond marginal changes to the status quo.
I forgot to mention that the trend is toward greater centralization. Any crisis will, I think, probably increase the federal role and not decrease it. It seems to me that’s been the trend.
After presenting a historical list of how previous crises have resulted in governmental reform from the Articles of Confederation to Dodd-Frank….
Dodd-Frank as reform? I do not think that word …. Ah, never mind.
In any event, we only elect people that think that government is the answer (if they didn’t, they wouldn’t run for office), so why should we be surprised that we keep getting more government?