Tribal Exceptionalism
Here’s the conclusion to Matt’s entertaining Prospect piece on the incompetence of Bush appointees:
The other possibility is that Republicans are so convinced that government is inefficient and full of people who don’t know what they’re doing that it just doesn’t occur to them to do it any other way.
Nice. Naturally, Matt is implying that there is some other way to do it. But, no. The Republicans are right; that’s just how government works. The problem with the Republicans is that they, being invested with power, are insufferably opportunistic hypocrites. They’re not uniquely prone to cronyism. They’re just prone to being in power, which is the enabling condition for the cronyism to which all political types aspire. And they’re prone to the horribly annoying-to-libertarians habit of throwing libertarian-tinged rhetoric around when, obviously, they’re champion statists. Now, I know Matt’s a tough-minded realist. So I guess the point of implying that Democrats are less likely to “play politics” with political power was just to affirm his readers’ unfounded faith in their tribe’s intelligence and virtue. In that case, job well done.
September 14th, 2005 11:13
There’s no question that Matt is pandering to partisan Democrats. Bad Matt!
But if only he would have referred to this administration instead of Republicans in general, the sentence Will quotes would make as good an explanation as any.
Will dismisses all government bureaucracies as incompetent and inefficient. But he could not possibly deny that some are more competent and efficient than others. After all, there’s really no such things as inefficient and efficient, only MORE and LESS efficient.
When, as is the case, we’re stuck with goverment bureaucracies their marginal efficiency does matter. But libertarian ideology is so powerful that it makes people, even Will, ignore this. I think Matt’s explanation in terms the cynicism of anti-goverment ideologues is plausible.
September 14th, 2005 11:39
Bill, I agree efficiency on the margin matters, and I certainly don’t ignore it. But I haven’t seen any evidence one way or the other to indicate that the current adminstration is overseeing the bureaucracy marginally better or worse than other adminstrations. Are there any non-anecdotal measures of bureacratic effectiveness? And it is extremely implausible to see Bush administration appointees as either cynical or anti-government ideologues. They are more likely to be evangelical utopian zealots, or rah rah efficient government let’s apply my MBA to the business of government types.
September 16th, 2005 15:26
Ah, Matt. The piece would be a bit more convincing if not for this blatant factual error:
Umm, really? Quoting from his biography:
He has a Ph.D. in economics and taught economics at UMd, UVa, and GWU.