We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Making Government Work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2024
Bashing bureaucrats is an old American political tradition, and no one took this further than Donald Trump, who actively sought to fire civil servants and find other ways to subvert the bureaucracy. Over the nation’s history, the government has taken on an increasing and successful role in ensuring prosperity, protecting people, and promoting equality, and this success is due in no small part to the contribution of civil servants. Like all institutions, the government fails because its employees let it down, but it also fails because of incompetent political leaders who ignore the advice of knowledgeable and experienced civil servants or reject their advice because it conflicts with an ideological agenda. Andrew Jackson famously thought running the government did not require any special skills, and Donald Trump went even further in thinking that he did not need to know anything about how the government ran or what the civil service advised. The results were disastrous for both presidents and the country. Government needs administration, especially in times of emergency, and government needs public servants like Anthony Fauci to carry out its programs.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
