If you ever saw the film “The Candidate” you will know that it ends with the classic line: “What do I do now?” Robert Redford’s character in that film had just won his election, and though he had spent months promising to help people and move the government towards his agenda, he had no idea how to accomplish that.
That encapsulates the feelings of most people who actually get elected to office for the first time. After months of campaigning and promising, they win, and then they are at a loss as to what to do. To all candidates I ever spoke to when they were asking for my endorsement for office (back when my endorsement meant something), I would always tell them my sixth rule of politics as advice as to how to direct their efforts during their time in office:
“There are two ways to approach your time in elected office. You will either become an advocate for the people to the bureaucracy, or you will become the mouthpiece of the bureaucracy to the people.”
Simply stated, this means you will either press the agenda of the people that elected you to the bureaucrats, or you will explain the agenda of the bureaucrats to people and tell them why the bureaucracy is right in what they want to do. There really is no other choices in government for any elected or appointed official. There are hundreds of elected and appointed officials. There are hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, and those bureaucrats spend their time trying to figure out how to co-opt the elected or appointed politicians to their agenda, and resist any effort of the elected or appointed politicians to dismantle that agenda. Unfortunately too many of the elected or appointed politicians choose to become the chief apologist to the public for the agenda of the bureaucrats. They literally just stop fighting the bureaucrats
The fact is most Democrats, since their major donors are government unions, simply hand their vote or their agenda over to the bureaucrats, and spend most of their time explaining to people why the bureaucracy is right. Unfortunately, that happens with too many Republicans as well.
I first learned this when I helped two friends become members of a city council when I was first beginning political action. They got elected, and the local city manager spent his time trying out how to get their vote on the city council. Once the city manager figured out that one of them would do anything to protect his friends on the police force and the other would do anything to protect his friends in the fire department, that was it. Whenever either one of them would threaten to cut back government, the city manager would tell them he would have to cut police officers or fire officials. He would then persuade them their only choice to prevent termination of their friends was to raise taxes, and even though both had promised me they would never do that, they did it anyway. They would then spend their time telling me why I was wrong and the city manager was right.
It happened at state government as well. One department director appointed by Pete Wilson, who I really liked and who had developed a good reputation in another state as a great reformer, got co-opted by a career bureaucrat, and would never proposed to cut one of the departments that I oversaw in the budget committee on which I sat. That career bureaucrat spent his time trying to tell me that I was standing in the way of Pete Wilson’s agenda whenever I refused to expand the size and scope of the bureaucracy he oversaw.
Another director became the chief apologist for the budget demands of another department. Both of them were Republicans. Neither of them became advocates for a smaller government, or less spending in their budget areas. It was very disheartening. They would come to me telling me that I had to support Pete Wilson’s increases in their budgets if I wanted to be a “good Republican.” I told them I don’t support increasing the size and scope of government, at all, for anybody. That was my voters elected me to do.
If you ever want to know why the size and scope of government keeps expanding no matter who gets elected, this is why. The bureaucracy has co-opted their political overseers, who then become the advocates for the bureaucracy, rather than the protector of the people. People want less government theft of their money, and less government interference in their lives. The bureaucracy wants a larger bureaucracy, which is achieved by higher taxes and more intrusion into people’s lives.
Once again, I will compliment Trump thus far. He seems to be doing what he was elected to do, that is, become an advocate of the people to the bureaucracy. He’s got four years to accomplish the reduction of government spending and the control of government power, and the bureaucracy will do everything in its power to resist his efforts during those four years, hoping to get an elected official in the next administration to become their chief apologist. Only time will tell if the bureaucracy will be dismantled or survive Trump’s efforts to bring it under control.