Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder This is what would have happened had Romney won. Thank goodness it didn't. <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2013/06/02/mitt-romney-inc-the-white-house-that-never-was/" target="_blank">http://swampland.time.com/2013...ver-was/</a> Sample: The White House staff is similar to a holding company” read one PowerPoint slide, which would have been presented to President-elect Romney as part of an expansive briefing on the morning after Election Day. It went on to list three main divisions of the metaphorical firm: “Care & Feeding Offices,” like speechwriting, “Policy Offices,” like the National Security Council, and “Packaging & Selling Offices,” like the office of the press secretary. This was the view of the Presidency Romney would have brought with him to Washington, a glimpse of the White House that never was — and plan that never saw the light of day.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer The problem is that it tries to force the messy give and take of politics into a structured business model. Politics is by nature disorganized because it isn't as hierarchical as business. The president can't command a member of congress to do anything. Any person in the government outside of the Administrative branch should show him respect, but he isn't their boss. Romney was going in to this thinking that it would make him the CEO of America, but the President isn't that. He's the COO of the Executive Branch, and what he does is limited by the legislative priorities of Congress and the rulings of the Supreme Court.
Originally Posted By ecdc What Tom said. Historically government has worked (more or less) because people in Congress felt like they had to actually accomplish something. That's changed significantly. Ezra Klein made an excellent point about the filibuster: When liberals whine about it and demand something be done, they assume Senators actually want reform. But the filibuster allows Democrats and Republicans alike to stay off record and blame it on Tea Party losers like Paul, Lee, or Cruz, and their filibuster. Government worked because, by and large, Congressmen weren't all that ideological. I got a first-hand look at this in Washington and still get it second-hand from my dad who works there. It was business. Hence the stories we all hear about Congressmen fighting like cats and dogs on the House or Senate floor then getting together for a drink afterwards. What we see today is what happens when you actually elect die-hard ideologues who won't budge. Couple that with gerrymandered House seats where members feel more pressure over a primary than a General Election, and you've got the current situation. How Mitt fixes any of this, or how Obama does, is beyond me. Or as Jonathan Chait asked, why on earth are liberals wondering why Obama can't get Republicans to help him defeat them?
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 I am amazed people are even concerned about this... He lost case closed.. Or is this being used to distract us from the failures of the current administration..,I mean, they have to do something , blaming Bush won't work anymore.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>What Tom said.<< >>Government worked because, by and large, Congressmen weren't all that ideological. I got a first-hand look at this in Washington and still get it second-hand from my dad who works there. It was business. << This is the exact opposite of what Tom said. And my point. What is wrong with Government being more organized?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I think Tom's point was: "Politics is by nature disorganized because it isn't as hierarchical as business." You can have highly "organized" politics, but of course ultimately that's dictatorship, not democracy. As long as you have competing interests all with a seat at the table, who are NOT all pulling for the same thing (unlike, presumably, a corporation) you will have something messier. A government is not a business, which is the fundamental mistake the "Government should be run like a business crowd" overlooks. Can you have a more "organized" government and stop well short of dictatorship? Arguably, that's what we've had lately. The parties are more organized and disciplined than ever, certainly in our lifetimes. Liberal Republicans are a vanished species, and conservative Democrats more so than ever. Of course, if you mean by "organized" simply the president's team having a better handle on all the departments under them, then sure. But that's not what either ecdc or Tom were talking about, and I don't think they contradicted each other.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< The president can't command a member of congress to do anything. Any person in the government outside of the Administrative branch should show him respect, but he isn't their boss. Romney was going in to this thinking that it would make him the CEO of America, but the President isn't that. >>> This sounds very much like the frustrations that Governor Schwarzenegger ran into when he took office. He thought that now that he was in charge of the state, he'd run it like he did his businesses. But it doesn't work that way.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>But that's not what either ecdc or Tom were talking about<< But it's exactly what R2P (the author of the report to Romney) was talking about. And they're getting blasted for it, and I'm at a total loss to understand why. Other than conservatives like organization, therefore organization is bad. As for his policy agenda, I think we already knew that. No sense in getting mad about it again everything some little thing about Romney hits the internets.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I don't see anything scary about it, and don't think it meant Romney had any illusion that he could control Congress... I'm sure he learned that with the MA legislature when he was governor. I think it is just natural that business-oriented people would use "corporate-speak" language for their organization. In actuality, it is very little different from how ANY President organizes the Executive Branch. I've worked in both private and public settings... each has their advantages. I think the private sector is generally run more efficiently, but most any advantage there is offset by the much higher salaries they usually pay for middle and upper management. i think the public sector generally treats its lower-level workers much more equitably.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <>>But that's not what either ecdc or Tom were talking about<< <But it's exactly what R2P (the author of the report to Romney) was talking about. And they're getting blasted for it,> Not from me. And really, not even from Tom and ecdc, except that perhaps they saw it as naive. Every new president promises to streamline things, and some even succeed... partially. Nothing wrong with trying it, but had the Romney team tried it, I think they might have run into more snags than most, even, simply because they don't seem to understand that the White House is NOT a business and doesn't really have things like "deliverables" except in the broadest possible definition. And it DID sort of blithely ignore that little thing called Congress if they thought, for instance, that they could really repeal Obama care in the first few months; the Senate would simply have defeated that, or filibustered even if the Republicans had won control in 2012. That's just one example (don't get me started on how easily they seemed to think they could reform the mammoth tax code.)
Originally Posted By mawnck I don't think having a plan to do something, and thinking it will be easy, are the same thing.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer But having a plan that doesn't reflect the reality of the organization that you are joining is naive and inefficient. He might have thought that having defined deliverables and an expectation to see that those targets were met was enough to guarantee change, but the fact is that as soon as someone in the White House or the Cabinet needs something from an outsider they don't have that kind of control. When Bain Capital tells a subsidiary to cut 10% of their budget the subsidiary has to listen. But the White House can't unilaterally tell the Department of Education to cut 10% of it's budget. And when the budget is cut they can't touch the programs set up by Congress. More organization isn't a bad thing, but you have to organize in a way that would work for government and not business and with the understanding that your budget and your priorities are set by your board of directors - Congress.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <I don't think having a plan to do something, and thinking it will be easy, are the same thing.> <<But having a plan that doesn't reflect the reality of the organization that you are joining is naive and inefficient.>> Exactly. In the Obamacare example, only far-right ideologues should even be in the business of thinking that was in the realm of possibility. Romney Corp. are supposed to be pragmatists. They should have known there was no way the Republicans were going to take 60 seats in the senate, even if they gained control (which, of course, they did not). So it would have been very easy for the Democrats to play "turnabout is fair play" and filibuster repeal of a dearly-held Democratic initiative. I'm not knocking the concept of this plan. Streamlining is good. Everyone wants that. But if you start with the fundamentally flawed concept that the government can be run like a business, you'll probably not be as successful at it as people who understand government better and even kinda like it. (Clinton was probably the most successful at streamlining in my lifetime.)
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder It's one thing to have a plan like this, an entirely different thing to come in as a newly elected President who wasn't even his party's first second or third choice. Even Bush II waited until his second term before stupidly talking about having "political capital" to spend. And I remember being very frustrated with Pelosi and Reid being two of the main reasons why Obama couldn't get anything done right away, because they thought THEY were in charge in 2009. I can only imagine what the Tea Party Lunatics would have done to Romney. They'd be telling HIM how he was going to organize the white House. Point is, it takes time and getting familiar with the surroundings before going new into anywhere, White House included. Thinking they could dictate every aspect was foolhardy and naïve.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Clinton was probably the most successful at streamlining in my lifetime.<< His transition sucked. <a href="http://transition2008.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/transition-1992-bill-clinton/" target="_blank">http://transition2008.wordpres...clinton/</a>
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Wasn't talking about his transition, but his efforts at streamlining during his presidency as a whole.
Originally Posted By Labuda Since I haven't been around much lately, I feel the need to pont out that this: "Tea Party losers like Paul, Lee, or Cruz, and their filibuster." is something else that makes me ashamed of my state. My fellow Texans (not me, I guarantee you that, and not Austin!) elected Cruz. Jesus, what is WRONG with this state? ARGH
