President Obama’s Clutter

The hero of the American Left wrote last week about the vastly increased number of personnel and officials President Obama has filled his administration with, specifically his White House Staff. These "changes to the management structure of the White House…will likely undermine his stated aims and create a more centralized and possibly incoherent policy process."

In one example of this, the President has apparently mastered the recipe for confusion and tension in his appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Sen. George Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East, and Richard Holbrooke as the same to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Each of these personages are points of accomplishment and power in their own right who have been lumped together with concurring jurisdictions in the same area. Almost inevitably this will entail jealous turf wars for influence and authority that will leave the President directly in the cross-fire, in much the same manner as his predecessor was caught between the turf wars of Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld.

This tack is in keeping with the ideas the Left has of governance. To manage affairs you install as many managers as possible in a central point. These are either in the form of individuals ("czars") and/or offices, commissions, and agencies (bureaucracy). These entities are the brains in their fields; usually highly educated and experienced officials who are respected by other officials in the central government and trusted to knowledgeably manage a specific set of affairs from their central perch. (It's basically a system of reciprocal self-emolument). This conception of enlightened government runs all the way back in history to the Enlightenment ideology of the philosophѐs in the French Revolution. Messrs. Mitchell and Holbrooke are manifestations of it in the Obama Administration; Mr. Rove details even more in his piece. Congressional Democrats' pleas for a "car czar" to manage the bailout of Detroit were another, as was the creation of the Iraq Study Group. The ultimate example is the infinite number of cabinet departments and federal agencies that have malignantly developed within the federal government (and state governments too) over the decades.

And as Rove points out, it's all a cluttered mess of redundancy, excess, and confusion. It breeds jealousies, petty rivalries and, all too often, slow, stilted, unresponsive action. It's scarcely a wonder that the ship of state rarely ever gets anywhere when so many hands are on the helm pulling it in opposite directions. It is nothing but a big mass that is completely unwieldy, as are the areas it presumes to be able to manage effectively for that matter.

Regrettably, President Obama has deliberately permitted this sorry state of affairs to metastasize within his own White House and administration, almost inevitably guaranteeing its follies will metastasize as well. To respond to the sudden challenges that always pop up – especially in times like these – the President should have a more streamlined structure in place, one capable of rapid and effective response. This current iteration doesn't look to be it.