7 ms·

Increasing complexity: A day in the life of the president

39 points by linhir 16y ago

uuilly 16y ago
"Gridlock is not an American problem, it is an American achievement! When James Madison and 54 other geniuses went to Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787, they did not go there to design an efficient government. That idea would have horrified them. They wanted a safe government, to which end they filled it with blocking mechanisms: three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajorities, and judicial review. And yet, I can think of nothing the American people have wanted intensely and protractedly that they did not eventually get. The world understands, a world most of whose people live under governments they wish were capable of gridlock, that we always have more to fear from government speed than government tardiness." -George Will
- loewenskind 16y ago
  This is only the case when you imagine your government is only capable of incompetence. A safe assumption in America but not everywhere.
  - jackowayed 16y ago
    They didn't design the government that way because they were afraid of government incompetence. They were afraid of replacing one tyrant with another tyrant or small group of them. And also of majorities persecuting minorities. And of the government getting caught up in "popular passions" and overreacting to things that people briefly got very fired up about.
    - _politicalist 16y ago
      True, but the minorities they were interested in protecting weren't the kinds we normally think of. After all, many owned slaves. And even when it comes to groups like females and "Indians", their record wasn't exactly impressive either. But they were themselves minorities: wealthy property-owners. The elite minority. And I think history shows that they were themselves the minorities they wanted to protect. With every incentive in the world to do so. The "popular passions" were no doubt a frightening thing to them. I think this is fairly apparent even in documents for public consumption, like The Federalist No. 10. (Of course, for more serious analysis, we'd want to turn away from the Federalist Papers and look instead to the records of actual decisionmaking.) Like most nations, the US has a founding myth. Since it's so recent and there were witnesses, the Founding Fathers can't exactly have overt superpowers like levitation or divine birth, but they are still portrayed in a mythologized way. So when looking at the founding of any nation, a little extra care is needed not to be led astray.
      - pragmatic 16y ago
        The gentleman planters of that era saw themselves as intellectual bulwarks against base urges of the common man. Thomas Jefferson is the archetypal gentleman planter (with all the good and bad that entails, e.g. education and slavery). Don't forgot it was common at this time to buy booze for those that supported you in an election. The gentry that created the framework for the government were well aware that they needed to protect the common man from himself most of all, let alone the tyranny of another dictator.
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      Well, my point was that other governments weren't designed that way and do fine. I think it's safe to say that people in e.g. Sweden trust their government more since (a) there are so many government services and (b) Sweden is supposed to be the most democratic place on earth. > And of the government getting caught up in "popular passions" and overreacting to things that people briefly got very fired up about. Well, the US government still does this to devastating effect (e.g. "war on terror", patriot act, etc.).
      - luu 16y ago
        Sweden is a small[1] culturally and racially homogenous country. If you look at indices that try to measure good governance, they correlate very strongly with all of those factors [2]. It's amazing that the U.S. does as well as it does, considering its size, and the fact that it allows so many poor immigrants with heterogeneous backgrounds into the country. [1] population ~ 9M. NYC alone has nearly 8M people and is much more diverse. [2] http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/mc_chart.asp http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/mc_chart.asp
      - anamax 16y ago
        > Well, my point was that other governments weren't designed that way and do fine. I think it's safe to say that people in e.g. Sweden trust their government more since (a) there are so many government services and (b) Sweden is supposed to be the most democratic place on earth. Sounds like a lesser Minnesota. Lots of things work with populations of Swedes.
    - eru 16y ago
      And the funny thing is, that the British weren't very tyrannical, and evolving to greater democracy all the time. The Americans were overly paranoid --- or hypocritical (i.e. their revolution had other aims than stated).
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Incompetence isn't great, but it's the best guard against competent evil.
  - karzeem 16y ago
    The government isn't optimized to produce the best case, it's optimized to avoid the worst case.
    - jacobolus 16y ago
      Or, more accurately, it’s optimized to avoid all of the worst cases from the perspectives of the various factions/interests within the society, for which each faction is willing to give up its personal “best case”. (The idea of a universal “best case” or “worst case” is rather meaningless.) Those interested in the original theory behind it should read Federalist #10 and Federalist #51, a pair of brilliant essays. http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm (And if especially ambitious, should then read Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America)
philwelch 16y ago
I have to wonder whether the increasing difficulty of the presidency may have been one of the reasons for Bush's and now Obama's poor performance and reputation. It may indeed be too much work for anyone to do well.
- martey 16y ago
  The article seems to suggest that it is rather the result of a press looking for short-term advantage over their competitors and an uneducated populace who listens to them. I think that it is true that increases in lobbying and decreases in bipartisanship have reduced the ability of much of the American government (not just the presidency) to get things done, but I think those issues would be mitigated if more of the voting population was willing to delve deeper into legislative issues. Soundbites might be easier to digest, but they are also less filling.
- pragmatic 16y ago
  Could it be also, that the government is now involved in too many aspects of daily life? Education, nutrition, employment, regulation at a micro economic/firm level and economic development are some areas into which the government has expanded.
maxklein 16y ago
That's an advantage of the Chinese system - you can run the system as a collaboration between a committee of Bureaucrats, and leave all the baby-kissing or earthquake-rubble-trapped-person-cheering-up to the premier. Such complexity is too much for a single person - a group of technocrats is a better way to run such a huge and complicated machine.
- swombat 16y ago
  Give it another 10-20 years to see if the Chinese economy doesn't pop, before claiming the Chinese model to be superior in some way. The endless rows of empty buildings in Shanghai tell a different story, despite the "group of technocrats"' desire to keep that hushed.
  - maxklein 16y ago
    What a weak argument! Yes, let's wait 10-20 years to come back to this comment to say "I told you so."
- anamax 16y ago
  > Such complexity is too much for a single person - a group of technocrats is a better way to run such a huge and complicated machine. Oh really? How many technocrats do you know who you'd entrust with your life decisions? What are the odds that they'd be the ones in that position as opposed by the resume-packing tards who infest student govts everywhere? Eisenhower's "military industrial complex" speech was actually a warning about technocracy. (The MIC stuff gets more play because it fits the narrative and has cute phrasing.)
- anamax 16y ago
  > Such complexity is too much for a single person - a group of technocrats is a better way to run such a huge and complicated machine. Someone ends up with the deciding vote. What are the odds that the technocrats who can competently run healthcare are the same technocrats who can completently run transportation? What are the odds that either group has relevant information at the right level? "information" overload on technocrats is why the US has one set of design characteristics for energy efficient windows even though the climate is such that it should have at least three. (Energy efficient window design for Florida is very different from EEWD for Minnesota, let alone Alaska. I suspect that AZ and FL are should be different because of humidity even though they have comparable temperatures.)
temphn 16y ago
The fundamental problem is the centralization of what should be distributed computation and decision making. The federal government busies itself with making rules that prohibit and distort voluntary exchanges between individuals and businesses. Many of the rules it considers or enacts in a fit of piqué or in response to the latest headline pose existential threats to businesses. To survive, businesses have to lobby. The money is also nothing comparatively. Obama and co spent around 787 billion, just on the stimulus. That sort of money flying through the air can destroy you directly or flow into the pockets of your competitors. So against your better judgment and with a heavy heart you lobby. You would much rather that Washington geld itself so that you can get back to growing your business.
flipbrad 16y ago
If I have an issue with this article, it's that it reaches a crescendo of Obama-worship by the end (celebrating healthcare reform with a depiction of a White House martini-on-the-balcony scene worthy of a crap James Bond ending) - clearly, the price of access to Rahm Emanuel. Thus after painting a derogatory picture of 24/7 news media (not Vanity Fair's game) as a child badly in need of Ritalin, then playing down the general media's power (" The press may claim the vestigial title of Fourth Estate, but it is the lobbying industry that is now effectively the fourth branch of government"), Vanity Fair is actually trading its detachment and objectivity for access to the Oval Office; hardly demonstrative of the standards it bemoans the absence of in Washington... a poetic illustration of a different facet of Washington's ills, maybe, but really unimpressive.

39 points by linhir 16y ago

"Gridlock is not an American problem, it is an American achievement! When James Madison and 54 other geniuses went to Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787, they did not go there to design an efficient government. That idea would have horrified them. They wanted a safe government, to which end they filled it with blocking mechanisms: three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajorities, and judicial review. And yet, I can think of nothing the American people have wanted intensely and protractedly that they did not eventually get. The world understands, a world most of whose people live under governments they wish were capable of gridlock, that we always have more to fear from government speed than government tardiness." -George Will

loewenskind 16y ago
This is only the case when you imagine your government is only capable of incompetence. A safe assumption in America but not everywhere.
- jackowayed 16y ago
  They didn't design the government that way because they were afraid of government incompetence. They were afraid of replacing one tyrant with another tyrant or small group of them. And also of majorities persecuting minorities. And of the government getting caught up in "popular passions" and overreacting to things that people briefly got very fired up about.
  - _politicalist 16y ago
    True, but the minorities they were interested in protecting weren't the kinds we normally think of. After all, many owned slaves. And even when it comes to groups like females and "Indians", their record wasn't exactly impressive either. But they were themselves minorities: wealthy property-owners. The elite minority. And I think history shows that they were themselves the minorities they wanted to protect. With every incentive in the world to do so. The "popular passions" were no doubt a frightening thing to them. I think this is fairly apparent even in documents for public consumption, like The Federalist No. 10. (Of course, for more serious analysis, we'd want to turn away from the Federalist Papers and look instead to the records of actual decisionmaking.) Like most nations, the US has a founding myth. Since it's so recent and there were witnesses, the Founding Fathers can't exactly have overt superpowers like levitation or divine birth, but they are still portrayed in a mythologized way. So when looking at the founding of any nation, a little extra care is needed not to be led astray.
    - pragmatic 16y ago
      The gentleman planters of that era saw themselves as intellectual bulwarks against base urges of the common man. Thomas Jefferson is the archetypal gentleman planter (with all the good and bad that entails, e.g. education and slavery). Don't forgot it was common at this time to buy booze for those that supported you in an election. The gentry that created the framework for the government were well aware that they needed to protect the common man from himself most of all, let alone the tyranny of another dictator.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    Well, my point was that other governments weren't designed that way and do fine. I think it's safe to say that people in e.g. Sweden trust their government more since (a) there are so many government services and (b) Sweden is supposed to be the most democratic place on earth. > And of the government getting caught up in "popular passions" and overreacting to things that people briefly got very fired up about. Well, the US government still does this to devastating effect (e.g. "war on terror", patriot act, etc.).
    - luu 16y ago
      Sweden is a small[1] culturally and racially homogenous country. If you look at indices that try to measure good governance, they correlate very strongly with all of those factors [2]. It's amazing that the U.S. does as well as it does, considering its size, and the fact that it allows so many poor immigrants with heterogeneous backgrounds into the country. [1] population ~ 9M. NYC alone has nearly 8M people and is much more diverse. [2] http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/mc_chart.asp http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/mc_chart.asp
    - anamax 16y ago
      > Well, my point was that other governments weren't designed that way and do fine. I think it's safe to say that people in e.g. Sweden trust their government more since (a) there are so many government services and (b) Sweden is supposed to be the most democratic place on earth. Sounds like a lesser Minnesota. Lots of things work with populations of Swedes.
  - eru 16y ago
    And the funny thing is, that the British weren't very tyrannical, and evolving to greater democracy all the time. The Americans were overly paranoid --- or hypocritical (i.e. their revolution had other aims than stated).
- philwelch 16y ago
  Incompetence isn't great, but it's the best guard against competent evil.
- karzeem 16y ago
  The government isn't optimized to produce the best case, it's optimized to avoid the worst case.
  - jacobolus 16y ago
    Or, more accurately, it’s optimized to avoid all of the worst cases from the perspectives of the various factions/interests within the society, for which each faction is willing to give up its personal “best case”. (The idea of a universal “best case” or “worst case” is rather meaningless.) Those interested in the original theory behind it should read Federalist #10 and Federalist #51, a pair of brilliant essays. http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa51.htm (And if especially ambitious, should then read Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America)

philwelch 16y ago

I have to wonder whether the increasing difficulty of the presidency may have been one of the reasons for Bush's and now Obama's poor performance and reputation. It may indeed be too much work for anyone to do well.

martey 16y ago
The article seems to suggest that it is rather the result of a press looking for short-term advantage over their competitors and an uneducated populace who listens to them. I think that it is true that increases in lobbying and decreases in bipartisanship have reduced the ability of much of the American government (not just the presidency) to get things done, but I think those issues would be mitigated if more of the voting population was willing to delve deeper into legislative issues. Soundbites might be easier to digest, but they are also less filling.
pragmatic 16y ago
Could it be also, that the government is now involved in too many aspects of daily life? Education, nutrition, employment, regulation at a micro economic/firm level and economic development are some areas into which the government has expanded.

maxklein 16y ago

That's an advantage of the Chinese system - you can run the system as a collaboration between a committee of Bureaucrats, and leave all the baby-kissing or earthquake-rubble-trapped-person-cheering-up to the premier. Such complexity is too much for a single person - a group of technocrats is a better way to run such a huge and complicated machine.

swombat 16y ago
Give it another 10-20 years to see if the Chinese economy doesn't pop, before claiming the Chinese model to be superior in some way. The endless rows of empty buildings in Shanghai tell a different story, despite the "group of technocrats"' desire to keep that hushed.
- maxklein 16y ago
  What a weak argument! Yes, let's wait 10-20 years to come back to this comment to say "I told you so."
anamax 16y ago
> Such complexity is too much for a single person - a group of technocrats is a better way to run such a huge and complicated machine. Oh really? How many technocrats do you know who you'd entrust with your life decisions? What are the odds that they'd be the ones in that position as opposed by the resume-packing tards who infest student govts everywhere? Eisenhower's "military industrial complex" speech was actually a warning about technocracy. (The MIC stuff gets more play because it fits the narrative and has cute phrasing.)
anamax 16y ago
> Such complexity is too much for a single person - a group of technocrats is a better way to run such a huge and complicated machine. Someone ends up with the deciding vote. What are the odds that the technocrats who can competently run healthcare are the same technocrats who can completently run transportation? What are the odds that either group has relevant information at the right level? "information" overload on technocrats is why the US has one set of design characteristics for energy efficient windows even though the climate is such that it should have at least three. (Energy efficient window design for Florida is very different from EEWD for Minnesota, let alone Alaska. I suspect that AZ and FL are should be different because of humidity even though they have comparable temperatures.)

temphn 16y ago

The fundamental problem is the centralization of what should be distributed computation and decision making. The federal government busies itself with making rules that prohibit and distort voluntary exchanges between individuals and businesses. Many of the rules it considers or enacts in a fit of piqué or in response to the latest headline pose existential threats to businesses. To survive, businesses have to lobby. The money is also nothing comparatively. Obama and co spent around 787 billion, just on the stimulus. That sort of money flying through the air can destroy you directly or flow into the pockets of your competitors. So against your better judgment and with a heavy heart you lobby. You would much rather that Washington geld itself so that you can get back to growing your business.

flipbrad 16y ago

If I have an issue with this article, it's that it reaches a crescendo of Obama-worship by the end (celebrating healthcare reform with a depiction of a White House martini-on-the-balcony scene worthy of a crap James Bond ending) - clearly, the price of access to Rahm Emanuel. Thus after painting a derogatory picture of 24/7 news media (not Vanity Fair's game) as a child badly in need of Ritalin, then playing down the general media's power (" The press may claim the vestigial title of Fourth Estate, but it is the lobbying industry that is now effectively the fourth branch of government"), Vanity Fair is actually trading its detachment and objectivity for access to the Oval Office; hardly demonstrative of the standards it bemoans the absence of in Washington... a poetic illustration of a different facet of Washington's ills, maybe, but really unimpressive.