On the eve of World War II, F.D.R. had six high-level aides who carried the title “administrative assistant to the president.” Harry Truman, after the war, had 12 of them: they met every morning in a semicircle around his desk. There are now upwards of 100 people who have some variation on “assistant to the president” in their titles.
Every layer of Pentagon bureaucracy is much larger than it was at the height of the Cold War. Paul Light of New York University's Wagner School of Public Service notes that in 1960 we had 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense. There are 530 today.
Please make it stop.
No comments:
Post a Comment