4 ms·

I was at a dinner once, where the couple sitting next to me was from Sacramento. The woman (a nice, elderly lady of around 60) worked for a lobbyist in Sacramen

I was at a dinner once, where the couple sitting next to me was from Sacramento. The woman (a nice, elderly lady of around 60) worked for a lobbyist in Sacramento as his secretary/"typist". She described how the committee (of representatives) kept changing while her boss stayed the same; as a result, one of the first things an incoming committee chair did was to ask her boss to help him out with the maze of rules and regulations. Oh, and often the committee chair would have her come over for meetings to take notes (as apparently they didn't have any position in the budget), which she dutifully shared with her boss. I used to be pro term limits, but my conversation with her was very eye opening.

mercer 10y ago
I recall that in one of my first lectures in my 'public administration' course the teacher explained how a number of high level public servants, practically speaking, have a lot of power, perhaps more even than the politicians they work for, because they hold the institutional knowledge and have the ear of the politicians who (generally) trust their expertise, across administrations. It was something I'd never thought about before and it also made me think about term limits and how things are not as simple as they seem.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  The British TV series, "Yes Minister" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister) and "Yes Prime Minister" was a satirical series based around exactly that premise - a clueless politician who felt he was making all the decisions, and the actual power-behind-the-scenes bureaucrat who did. Although aging, it is still scarily accurate, if not more so.