Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

Revolutionary Fervor

Maybe it’s because we are a country born out of a revolution, but Americans have a decided preference for dramatic change, and little interest in the boring details of our governmental processes.

 

I thought about that aspect of our national character earlier this month, as I listened to a variety of presentations at the annual Howey Political Forum. The focus was on economic and administrative challenges facing Indiana and proposals for meeting those challenges.

 

In a forceful speech, Governor Daniels emphasized his commitment to thoroughgoing change, and he ticked off a number of those he intends to pursue: continuing to close underused BMV license branches, privatizing prisons, consolidating school corporations, turning some state highways into toll roads, and several others. He added that “no one should be surprised” by his determination to enact sweeping changes in Indiana’s government, because he had run a campaign in which he’d promised to do just that.

 

Governor Daniels was absolutely right; he did campaign on a promise of sweeping change. And I suspect that the mantra of change was a very important element in his victory. “It’s time for a change” is a powerful and time-honored theme of American political life. Rather than analyzing what the proposed change will accomplish, and how it will be implemented, Americans have an unquenchable optimism that the new idea will be better than the one it replaced, and the bigger, the better.

 

This is not to speak to the merits of any of the Governor’s proposals. I agree with some, and disagree with others. But it was hard not to hear in his enthusiastic speech some disquieting echoes of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who was often quoted as saying about city government, “If it isn’t broken, break it. Then fix it.” I guess I just want to be sure that what we are undertaking to fix is really already broken.

 

I also think it is interesting that Republicans and Democrats alike prefer sweeping new measures to the sorts of admittedly boring, incremental improvements that everyone familiar with government thinks we need. During a later panel, Pat Kiely, a former Republican legislator widely respected on both sides of the aisle, talked about one of the enduring frustrations companies encounter when they do business with state government. Most state agencies are organized into regions. This makes sense: why should people in Northwest Indiana, for example, have to come to Indianapolis to deal with a government agency? But as Kiely noted, there is no consistency in either the number of regions or their number. The Indiana Economic Development Commission has six, Workforce Development has eleven, Tourism, six, the State Police, seventeen. There are nine Education Service Centers, four Indiana Housing and Community Development Offices, and three air quality regions. And so on.

 

Perhaps, before we embark on the really revolutionary changes—like turning our prisons and roads over to corporations—we could rationalize the haphazard mess through which we deliver state services. It wouldn’t be as sexy, but it’s already broken.

   

 

 

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Revolutionary Fervor

Maybe it’s because we are a country born out of a revolution, but Americans have a decided preference for dramatic change, and little interest in the boring details of our governmental processes.

 

I thought about that aspect of our national character earlier this month, as I listened to a variety of presentations at the annual Howey Political Forum. The focus was on economic and administrative challenges facing Indiana and proposals for meeting those challenges.

 

In a forceful speech, Governor Daniels emphasized his commitment to thoroughgoing change, and he ticked off a number of those he intends to pursue: continuing to close underused BMV license branches, privatizing prisons, consolidating school corporations, turning some state highways into toll roads, and several others. He added that “no one should be surprised” by his determination to enact sweeping changes in Indiana’s government, because he had run a campaign in which he’d promised to do just that.

 

Governor Daniels was absolutely right; he did campaign on a promise of sweeping change. And I suspect that the mantra of change was a very important element in his victory. “It’s time for a change” is a powerful and time-honored theme of American political life. Rather than analyzing what the proposed change will accomplish, and how it will be implemented, Americans have an unquenchable optimism that the new idea will be better than the one it replaced, and the bigger, the better.

 

This is not to speak to the merits of any of the Governor’s proposals. I agree with some, and disagree with others. But it was hard not to hear in his enthusiastic speech some disquieting echoes of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who was often quoted as saying about city government, “If it isn’t broken, break it. Then fix it.” I guess I just want to be sure that what we are undertaking to fix is really already broken.

 

I also think it is interesting that Republicans and Democrats alike prefer sweeping new measures to the sorts of admittedly boring, incremental improvements that everyone familiar with government thinks we need. During a later panel, Pat Kiely, a former Republican legislator widely respected on both sides of the aisle, talked about one of the enduring frustrations companies encounter when they do business with state government. Most state agencies are organized into regions. This makes sense: why should people in Northwest Indiana, for example, have to come to Indianapolis to deal with a government agency? But as Kiely noted, there is no consistency in either the number of regions or their number. The Indiana Economic Development Commission has six, Workforce Development has eleven, Tourism, six, the State Police, seventeen. There are nine Education Service Centers, four Indiana Housing and Community Development Offices, and three air quality regions. And so on.

 

Perhaps, before we embark on the really revolutionary changes—like turning our prisons and roads over to corporations—we could rationalize the haphazard mess through which we deliver state services. It wouldn’t be as sexy, but it’s already broken.

   

 

 

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Spoils of War

Americans really like to wage war—at least when it comes to domestic issues. There was Johnson’s War on Poverty, and Nixon’s War on Drugs (an Energizer Bunny of a war—still going strong). President Bush loses no opportunity to remind us that we are fighting a War on Terror.

We like our domestic wars for the same reasons we like sports contests: they are relatively short-term conflicts, and when they’re over, somebody won, and somebody else lost. Mission accomplished! Let’s go to the mall.

We aren’t quite so hot when it comes to the sustained, boring, never-ending business of making our government function. Where’s the excitement, after all, in policing, maintaining, coordinating and fine-tuning governing institutions? Those tasks offer none of the adrenalin rush of our “wars.” They don’t offer the same kinds of opportunities for pontificating on The Meaning of it All. And, of course, they rarely offer the lucrative rewards available to players who had the good sense to sign on with the winners. So we run American government at all levels pretty much the way we conduct our sporting events: we pay attention while the teams are on the field, and we lavishly reward the guys who win. And then we hit the channel button on the remote.

If it hadn’t been Hurricane Katrina, it would have been some other disaster that showed us the result of our constant denigration of actual government operations, our dismissal of all public servants as pathetic bureaucrats unable to function in the private sector. If we weren’t contemptuous of government, we wouldn’t treat national agencies like FEMA and local commissions charged with flood control as “turkey farms”—good-paying jobs for the political hacks who played with the winning team. I mean, it’s not like those agencies do anything important, right? To the victors go the spoils.

Not that patronage doesn’t have its place. We elect people (presumably) based upon their promise to steer government in a certain policy direction, and they are entitled to fill policymaking positions with people who agree with those directions. Theoretically, at least, we hold them accountable when they give important positions to people who can’t do the job. (And lots of people can’t. As easy as it is to pick on Michael Brown and his “experience” in horse-breeding, even real success in the private sector is no guarantee that someone won’t be clueless when it comes to the very different “business” we call government. It’s a lot harder to run a bureaucracy than it is to fight a battle, political or otherwise.) But most government work isn’t policy—it’s implementation. Is this air clean? Is this food safe? Will this city flood? These are functions than require a longer attention span than four or eight years.

Much as partisan ideologues hate to admit it, there’s a lot of government work that needs to be protected against partisan political priorities—and a lot of jobs that shouldn’t be handed out to turkeys as spoils of war.

  

Comments

Spoils of War

Americans really like to wage war—at least when it comes to domestic issues. There was Johnson’s War on Poverty, and Nixon’s War on Drugs (an Energizer Bunny of a war—still going strong). President Bush loses no opportunity to remind us that we are fighting a War on Terror.

 

We like our domestic wars for the same reasons we like sports contests: they are relatively short-term conflicts, and when they’re over, somebody won, and somebody else lost. Mission accomplished! Let’s go to the mall.

 

We aren’t quite so hot when it comes to the sustained, boring, never-ending business of making our government function. Where’s the excitement, after all, in policing, maintaining, coordinating and fine-tuning governing institutions? Those tasks offer none of the adrenalin rush of our “wars.” They don’t offer the same kinds of opportunities for pontificating on The Meaning of it All. And, of course, they rarely offer the lucrative rewards available to players who had the good sense to sign on with the winners. So we run American government at all levels pretty much the way we conduct our sporting events: we pay attention while the teams are on the field, and we lavishly reward the guys who win. And then we hit the channel button on the remote.

 

If it hadn’t been Hurricane Katrina, it would have been some other disaster that showed us the result of our constant denigration of actual government operations, our dismissal of all public servants as pathetic bureaucrats unable to function in the private sector. If we weren’t contemptuous of government, we wouldn’t treat national agencies like FEMA and local commissions charged with flood control as “turkey farms”—good-paying jobs for the political hacks who played with the winning team. I mean, it’s not like those agencies do anything important, right? To the victors go the spoils.

 

Not that patronage doesn’t have its place. We elect people (presumably) based upon their promise to steer government in a certain policy direction, and they are entitled to fill policymaking positions with people who agree with those directions. Theoretically, at least, we hold them accountable when they give important positions to people who can’t do the job. (And lots of people can’t. As easy as it is to pick on Michael Brown and his “experience” in horse-breeding, even real success in the private sector is no guarantee that someone won’t be clueless when it comes to the very different “business” we call government. It’s a lot harder to run a bureaucracy than it is to fight a battle, political or otherwise.) But most government work isn’t policy—it’s implementation. Is this air clean? Is this food safe? Will this city flood? These are functions than require a longer attention span than four or eight years.

Much as partisan ideologues hate to admit it, there’s a lot of government work that needs to be protected against partisan political priorities—and a lot of jobs that shouldn’t be handed out to turkeys as spoils of war.

 

 

 

  

Comments

We Always Pay the Piper

The picture of Timothy ‘Jake’ Laird stared out at me from page one of my morning paper–so terribly young, so much like the idealistic young criminal justice students in my classes. He was gunned down before he really had a chance to live, as much the victim of failed public policies as the man who pulled the trigger.
Continue reading “We Always Pay the Piper”

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