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Llewellyn
King
Read Llewellyn's bio and previous columns
September 8, 2008
OK, Agents of
Change: The Swamp in Washington Awaits
Dear John, Barack,
Sarah and Joe,
You have come a long
way, gang, and two of you are going all the way. Congratulations. All
four of you say you are going to change Washington. Here in the nation's
capital, we are not convinced.
For starters, let us
take earmarks. They run in the thousands. They may be dented by a new
administration, but they will not be stopped. Bringing home the pork is
largely why we, as voters, send our senators and representatives to
Capitol Hill. Earmarks have become a clumsy redress for the indifference
of the central government to local need. They have become the palpable
evidence of our tax dollars at work. We cannot sense the value of a
missile shield in Eastern Europe, but we can measure the stop-and-go
traffic on our way to work.
If all politics are
local, so are all earmarks. The courts have said that the president is
not entitled to a line-item veto. Ergo, John McCain, unless you can
substitute a funding initiative that Congress will agree to, or you are
prepared to shut down the government often, your promises will go
unfulfilled. (Check the shutting-down-the-government option with Newt
Gingrich.)
Then, friends, there
is the permanent alternative administration: The think tanks. These are
the intellectual halfway houses where ambitious public servants park
between tours of duty in government. Their influence is pervasive,
subtle and continual. Every administration leans on think tanks who
agree philosophically with it. And there is always a think tank that is
particularly close to every administration. For Ronald Reagan, it was
The Heritage Foundation; for Bill Clinton, it was The Brookings
Institution; and for George W. Bush, it the American Enterprise
Institute.
The epicenter of neoconservatism, AEI provided the Bush Administration
with ideas, personnel, moral support and rationales for the invasion of
Iraq and the formulation and promotion of the troop surge. Vice
President Dick Cheney has been especially close to AEI. His wife, Lynne,
is a fellow there and many old colleagues inhabit its halls on 17th
Street. They include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John
Bolton, Lawrence Lindsey and David Frum. You have to admire the place
and its initiative in seducing an entire administration.
Growing in influence
on the conservative side, and waiting for a friend in the White House,
is the Cato Institute, which has been strengthening its roster of
libertarian/conservative thinkers.
Meanwhile, the
liberal Brookings Institution is churning out policy papers on
everything from education reform to Pakistan. A team of powerful
liberals is ready to take Barack Obama by the hand and lead him down the
path of liberal righteousness. Already, Brookings experts are advising
the Obama campaign, including Susan Rice, Clinton's assistant secretary
of state for African affairs. Of course, Strobe Talbott, Clinton's
deputy secretary of state, is president of the think tank and the
leading liberal columnist, E.J. Dionne, Jr., hangs his hat there.
The point is not
that the think tanks are bad but that they are powerful, and they
generate the ideas of government. Remember you may not be interested in
them, but they are interested in you. The press tends to point to the
lobbyists of K Street as controlling Washington. The lobbyists influence
Congress, but the think tanks influence an administration.
Finally, White House
hopefuls, there is the bureaucracy – permanent, entrenched and
bloody-minded. The civil service approaches each new administration with
skepticism and often hostility. With every administration, the
bureaucracy gets a new senior management team in the form of political
appointees (secretary, deputy secretary, assistant secretary, etc).
Often, the bureaucracy frustrates these appointees from the get-go. Many
a cabinet secretary has had to bring in a small group of loyalists in
order to wage war on the larger staff. One agency head told me that she
felt she could only confide in her chauffeur and her secretary.
You two lucky
victors in this presidential contest will learn that it is easier to
invade a faraway country than it is to reform the Washington
establishment. Orthodox or maverick, liberal or conservative, Washington
is waiting for you.
© 2008 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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