To give audience members at his Poynter Fellowship Lecture an idea of the current state of American government, journalist Jonathan Rauch '82 asked them to imagine what their houses would be like if they could never throw away anything they had ever bought.
That, said the columnist for the Washington, D.C.-based National Journal magazine, approximates just how mired in special interests the nation's government has become.
In his Jan. 26 speech at the Law School on the topic "Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working," Rauch also likened the U.S. capital to an overgrown jungle, filled with thousands and thousands of "niche players" (lobbyists or "client interest groups") who "adapt and change their programs to perpetuate themselves." These niche players, he said, are analogous to all of the small animals in the jungle -- ants, earthworms, birds, insects, spiders and microorganisms -- who "really shape the landscape" of the ecosystem. Politicians, on the other hand, are analogous to elephants, "quite conspicuous but really not all that important," he said.
"For 95% of what goes on in government, [politicians'] influence, for the most part, is marginal," Rauch said. "They cannot do all that much to change things or affect things because it's the niche players who are most affecting the shape, terrain and contour of the jungle."
In this jungle analogy, he stated, voters would be akin to a forest fire. They can bring about what may seem like a big change in Washington by their vote, said Rauch, but ultimately, "after a brief adjustment period ... the system has gone right on. And just as it is when going back into the forest after a fire, all these animals are back doing what they did again and you wouldn't even know the fire happened."
This "unfortunate" state of the federal government, the journalist told his audience, is also a natural consequence of its age. Over time, federal and state governments create more and more programs under pressure from an increasing number of special interest groups, said Rauch. Once these programs and special interest groups are established, he noted, it is "very rare for them to go away."
"Once you establish a program, the beneficiaries of that program will hire a professional lobbyist and build a grassroots organization in order to defend it," explained Rauch. "And that organization will have many things on its agenda from day to day, but there will be one thing more important than anything else, and that's making sure that its program never ends. Moreover, you can be assured that the group will care far more about protecting its program than anyone else in the country will care about getting rid of that program."
The government, at both the national and state levels, argued Rauch, has thus become stuck in a continual cycle where "programs create groups and groups defend and create programs." As a result, those who govern are losing the ability to effect any major changes in policy, and the government is losing its ability to solve problems, the journalist said.
"The issue is not that it's difficult for government to do things," he told his audience. "As we all know, the [nation's] founders wanted it to be hard for government to do things. What the founders didn't anticipate is that, as hard as it is for government to do things, it's even harder for government ever to undo anything. ... That means that over time you get a steady accumulation of programs that are virtually impossible to get rid of. And that means that, over time, they gradually begin to squeeze out the space for innovation. Space for innovation doesn't just mean budget space; it also means you run out of policy space."
Rauch's speech was based on the subject of his recent book, also titled "Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working." The book is a revision of his 1994 work "Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government." Rauch said that he revised the edition because events of the past few years have helped to confirm his original premise about the "inflexibility" of government.
In the past 20 years, noted Rauch, there have been several major efforts to reform government -- from Ronald Reagan's attempt to reduce the size of government, to Bill Clinton's effort to overhaul the health care system to Republican Sentator Newt Gingrinch's plan to slash government programs.
"People, I think, haven't quite realized this yet but the history books are going to say that the period that began with Reagan's election and ended with the ejection of Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House in 1996 was the greatest concentrated effort at reforming government since the Progressives a hundred years earlier," he said. "That is to say, you have very faithful leaders trying repeatedly to introduce changes in government and each one failed more spectacularly than the last." These failures at reform, he contended, were not a result of staunch public or partisan opposition, but rather, were caused by the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups.
The inability of government to bring about change has also created a society that is very cynical of its leaders, Rauch said.
"Again and again, politicians promise radical change in government 'if you only elect me,'" he said. "Again and again, the voters vote for these promises only to be sorely disappointed when the politicians discover, as they inevitably do, that they don't have the power to effect things more than marginally. ... The result of this is a heightened cycle of public cynicism, public alienation and public anger. ... [A]nd that anger itself builds to yet another reform movement, another head-on charge against the Washington jungle and another battle with quicksand in the end, a deeply unfortunate cycle in my view."
Rauch told his audience, however, that despite his pessimistic view of government, he believes that the public is also starting to realize the limits of politicians' power and is thus becoming more "realistic" in its expectations of government. The public, he said, is beginning to realize "that you cannot turn the clock back, that in America in the year 2000 you can never again have a government that is as simple, as uncluttered -- that exists in a policy climate devoid of client groups and political professionals -- as we did in 1950, let alone 1900."
Rauch suggested that one useful approach to dealing with the problem of government's inflexibility is for both voters and politicians alike to strive for what he calls "radical incrementalism," which he defines as "a steady diet of small change." Working toward or expecting small changes, rather than major overhauls in government, he said, is more likely to result in reform taking place.
"Do not expect final victory, but never give up -- that's the key toward making the most of the situation we're in," Rauch told his audience. "Bad news if you are a radical reformer. But for most of us, I think it's good news. It may mean the beginning of a more productive and less pathological relationship between Americans and their government."
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