> The successful wonk or the bureaucrat knows that such-and-such regulation was downstream her strivings, or that such-and-such deployment only happened because of her timely intervention. She made the difference. That too is influence.
Interesting, one reason why the DC establishment hated Trump is his tendency to bypass them and crown-source that kind of work to the internet.
As someone who was following several of those blogs at the time, it was interesting watching the pipeline from an idea on one of those blogs to a phrase in a speech for a policy proposal. In some cases I could even follow the chain of influence from one online personality to another.
Ask anyone in DC why they are there and the automatic answer is invariably "I want to make a difference.". One wonders how much better the world might be if the answer was "to fulfill my assigned responsibilities competently, efficiently, and efficaciously."
To put the military on par with Silicon Valley in terms of a “can-do” and action-oriented mindset seems odd to me. Defense spending consumes roughly 50% of the annual discretionary budget. To some extent, the Beltway bureaucratic monster is the Pentagon. The U.S. defense industry, its procurement processes, and equipment development planning are among the most regulated and burdened with red tape. The barriers for startups to enter the defense industry and drive innovation remain punishingly high. The defense sector is dominated by fewer than ten major players, with the Pentagon as their only customer. In many ways, the U.S. defense-industrial complex resembles its Soviet and Russian counterparts more than other American institutions. When some people got "creative" and tried to bypass the labyrinth of procedures and inter-service competition, the outcomes were often sub-optimal. The doomed XM8 project debacle offers a glimpse into these dynamics.
Nonetheless, your depiction of Beltway culture and methods is painfully accurate. The "Kennan Syndrome" infects everyone. Just look at the various articles titled "The Sources of X's Conduct" in Foreign Affairs. I vividly recall a friend describing a social event in DC where everyone was talking to each other until an honored undersecretary entered the room; immediately, everyone stopped and began lavishing praise upon him. Yes, DC culture is a contest of vanity and prestige, an endless oscillation between despair and self-aggrandizement. To say that 9 out of 10 DC veterans are cynics may be an exaggeration, but perhaps they're all jerks anyway. Yet, there is more truth to this than the simplified narrative of "rising West Coast elites vs. declining East Coast establishment" can capture.
My own narrative is twofold. First, as Matthew Yglesias pointed out in his recent piece, Shackling the State, the U.S. public sector has become increasingly over regulated since the 1970s, particularly at the federal level. The public sector is simply too risk-averse and is forced to bear the burden of ideology-laden regulations and demands. While the private sector is better equipped to push back against such demands, the federal public sector operates under much stricter conditions. The ever-tightening scrutiny of the public sector is the least politically resistant way for politicians to demonstrate they "can do" something in a divided Congress. This trend fits within the broader context of the "Sunshine Law Revolution" since the 1970s, where enhanced transparency in governance may have also contributed to Congressional dysfunction.
I would also argue that the distrust of public (and private) mega projects and the “growth mentality,” as well as the uncontrolled spiral of regulation, can be traced back to the West Coast. This very same pathology continues to plague California and similar regions. The so-called "can-do" mentality of the West Coast is restricted to a specific circle, which happens to be the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy.
Before we talk about injecting this mentality into the Beltway to revive and reform a supposedly rigged and aging system, we must first figure out why we can’t even fix the governance of Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Unless we change how the public perceives the public sector—and foster greater trust in it—the "can-do" and "act-now" mentality cannot take root or have any lasting, meaningful impact. Ironically, the paragons of the new West Coast elites are also the ones leading the growing chorus decrying the "deep state," the "establishment," and other such concepts.
To be fair, not all trends toward restricting the public sector are without merit. The federal government, with its vast bureaucratic machinery, is indeed very powerful—and if left unchecked, fully capable of causing significant harm.
That leads to my second point. Beyond regulation and distrust, the contrasting mindsets of the West Coast and the Beltway reflect radically distinct operational methods between the federal government, and the private tech sector/VC world. The government, by definition, operates as a monopoly, which means that the consequences of actions and decisions by individual agents are difficult to compartmentalize. The private sector and competitive markets, by contrast, thrive on leveraging asymmetric advantages in risk-taking. In an ideal market, the negative impacts of individual risk-taking are compartmentalized, while the successes and benefits are diffused through financial markets and the limited liability system.
This cannot be said of the federal government, where the dominant feature is hierarchy. A poor decision—or indecision—at the federal level can hinder, poison, or impair large segments of society, with far-reaching consequences. Beltway elites and non-profits work hard to influence and shape the "narrative" because power is a limited and highly sought-after commodity. There is, and should be, only one corridor of power. You don’t start a parallel State Department, and you definitely don’t want the Pentagon pursuing a foreign policy agenda separate from the White House. The nature of the federal government, particularly regarding national security, demands a high level of holistic and integrated thinking, which naturally fosters a contest of influence and popularity wherein the sole trophy is THE power.
You can’t simply "act" and "get things done" because most of the time you might not be in a position to act; otherwise, you'd become a rogue agent. Some individuals want to "act" and take matters into their own hands, but it rarely ends well. Just look at the botched so-called "Track 1.5 diplomacy" regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war.
For us Beltway cynics, our daily impressions of DC types are shaped by people outside the power structure—those eager to gain, steal, or con their way into influence and significance. We don’t compete against the DoD, State Department, or White House; to do so would be tantamount to rebellion. We certainly aren’t interested in elective politics either; otherwise, we’d be doing campaign financing and rallies outside DC. The people who actually "act" in DC aren’t talking all day. They only talk more when they’ve lost power.
All of this underscores the structural differences between the risk-taking/get-thinks-done private sector and the federal government and its affiliated vast policy complex. The Beltway surely needs to learn more and become less arrogant and complacent. The entire national security regime requires an overhaul to remain agile and scalable. However, we must first acknowledge that politics and business are built differently, serve different purposes, and operate in fundamentally different ways. Ignoring these constraints will only worsen the status quo and waste time and resources—both of which are in short supply.
> My own narrative is twofold. First, as Matthew Yglesias pointed out in his recent piece, Shackling the State, the U.S. public sector has become increasingly over regulated since the 1970s, particularly at the federal level.
The current massive bureaucratic government was largely created by FDR and to a lesser extend LBJ.
When a new batch of politicians came into office, they were faced with a massive established bureaucracy that they could barely understand. As such the only way they could establish some semblance of control was to essentially create another layer of bureaucracy to try to control the existing bureaucracy.
And then yet another new batch of politicians come into office and are faced with an even larger established bureaucracy that they can barely understand...
I agree that the modern federal political machine was founded by FDR but the ever expanding process was by no means exclusively a Democratic administrations’ project. Both Eisenhower and Nixon massively enlarged the federal government machine and I would argue the establishment of EPA under Nixon was one of the most tipping point of the development of the modern U.S. administrative state. The difference being that, once, the federal government endeavored to build and it got a lot of stuff built. The DC metro system is the legacy of LBJ‘s Great Society project. And as this article concluded, DC is no longer a city with building fever.
And btw I am not very keen on the PPP approach to make the public sector more “efficient”. Judging from the experience of UK, the withering of in-house capabilities and over relying on out-sourcing has become a chronic headache for the public sector.
After spending the first 30 years of my life in DC, Cambridge, and New York, I eventually moved to a suburb of a mid-sized city, where the message it tells me is: “stop being such an insecure, pretentious narcissist”.
I moved to nova in 2020 and lived in Maryland before that. I just can’t handle DC. Government work is just poison, and being around people that work in government is poison. The massive funnel of money flowing into DC and the natural beauty of the area can cover it up, but it’s really gone downhill in the last four years.
I’ve made up my mind to move at the earliest convenience.
I think my temperament is very New Yorker where I grew up and I’m in a money job, though livability in NYC is at a point where I’m heading to the sun belt. NYC doesn’t really have the vibe of the 90s anymore either.
> The successful wonk or the bureaucrat knows that such-and-such regulation was downstream her strivings, or that such-and-such deployment only happened because of her timely intervention. She made the difference. That too is influence.
Interesting, one reason why the DC establishment hated Trump is his tendency to bypass them and crown-source that kind of work to the internet.
As someone who was following several of those blogs at the time, it was interesting watching the pipeline from an idea on one of those blogs to a phrase in a speech for a policy proposal. In some cases I could even follow the chain of influence from one online personality to another.
Ask anyone in DC why they are there and the automatic answer is invariably "I want to make a difference.". One wonders how much better the world might be if the answer was "to fulfill my assigned responsibilities competently, efficiently, and efficaciously."
Remember if you made things worse, you still made a difference.
Wonderful piece. Some thoughts bellow.
To put the military on par with Silicon Valley in terms of a “can-do” and action-oriented mindset seems odd to me. Defense spending consumes roughly 50% of the annual discretionary budget. To some extent, the Beltway bureaucratic monster is the Pentagon. The U.S. defense industry, its procurement processes, and equipment development planning are among the most regulated and burdened with red tape. The barriers for startups to enter the defense industry and drive innovation remain punishingly high. The defense sector is dominated by fewer than ten major players, with the Pentagon as their only customer. In many ways, the U.S. defense-industrial complex resembles its Soviet and Russian counterparts more than other American institutions. When some people got "creative" and tried to bypass the labyrinth of procedures and inter-service competition, the outcomes were often sub-optimal. The doomed XM8 project debacle offers a glimpse into these dynamics.
Nonetheless, your depiction of Beltway culture and methods is painfully accurate. The "Kennan Syndrome" infects everyone. Just look at the various articles titled "The Sources of X's Conduct" in Foreign Affairs. I vividly recall a friend describing a social event in DC where everyone was talking to each other until an honored undersecretary entered the room; immediately, everyone stopped and began lavishing praise upon him. Yes, DC culture is a contest of vanity and prestige, an endless oscillation between despair and self-aggrandizement. To say that 9 out of 10 DC veterans are cynics may be an exaggeration, but perhaps they're all jerks anyway. Yet, there is more truth to this than the simplified narrative of "rising West Coast elites vs. declining East Coast establishment" can capture.
My own narrative is twofold. First, as Matthew Yglesias pointed out in his recent piece, Shackling the State, the U.S. public sector has become increasingly over regulated since the 1970s, particularly at the federal level. The public sector is simply too risk-averse and is forced to bear the burden of ideology-laden regulations and demands. While the private sector is better equipped to push back against such demands, the federal public sector operates under much stricter conditions. The ever-tightening scrutiny of the public sector is the least politically resistant way for politicians to demonstrate they "can do" something in a divided Congress. This trend fits within the broader context of the "Sunshine Law Revolution" since the 1970s, where enhanced transparency in governance may have also contributed to Congressional dysfunction.
I would also argue that the distrust of public (and private) mega projects and the “growth mentality,” as well as the uncontrolled spiral of regulation, can be traced back to the West Coast. This very same pathology continues to plague California and similar regions. The so-called "can-do" mentality of the West Coast is restricted to a specific circle, which happens to be the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy.
Before we talk about injecting this mentality into the Beltway to revive and reform a supposedly rigged and aging system, we must first figure out why we can’t even fix the governance of Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Unless we change how the public perceives the public sector—and foster greater trust in it—the "can-do" and "act-now" mentality cannot take root or have any lasting, meaningful impact. Ironically, the paragons of the new West Coast elites are also the ones leading the growing chorus decrying the "deep state," the "establishment," and other such concepts.
To be fair, not all trends toward restricting the public sector are without merit. The federal government, with its vast bureaucratic machinery, is indeed very powerful—and if left unchecked, fully capable of causing significant harm.
That leads to my second point. Beyond regulation and distrust, the contrasting mindsets of the West Coast and the Beltway reflect radically distinct operational methods between the federal government, and the private tech sector/VC world. The government, by definition, operates as a monopoly, which means that the consequences of actions and decisions by individual agents are difficult to compartmentalize. The private sector and competitive markets, by contrast, thrive on leveraging asymmetric advantages in risk-taking. In an ideal market, the negative impacts of individual risk-taking are compartmentalized, while the successes and benefits are diffused through financial markets and the limited liability system.
This cannot be said of the federal government, where the dominant feature is hierarchy. A poor decision—or indecision—at the federal level can hinder, poison, or impair large segments of society, with far-reaching consequences. Beltway elites and non-profits work hard to influence and shape the "narrative" because power is a limited and highly sought-after commodity. There is, and should be, only one corridor of power. You don’t start a parallel State Department, and you definitely don’t want the Pentagon pursuing a foreign policy agenda separate from the White House. The nature of the federal government, particularly regarding national security, demands a high level of holistic and integrated thinking, which naturally fosters a contest of influence and popularity wherein the sole trophy is THE power.
You can’t simply "act" and "get things done" because most of the time you might not be in a position to act; otherwise, you'd become a rogue agent. Some individuals want to "act" and take matters into their own hands, but it rarely ends well. Just look at the botched so-called "Track 1.5 diplomacy" regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war.
For us Beltway cynics, our daily impressions of DC types are shaped by people outside the power structure—those eager to gain, steal, or con their way into influence and significance. We don’t compete against the DoD, State Department, or White House; to do so would be tantamount to rebellion. We certainly aren’t interested in elective politics either; otherwise, we’d be doing campaign financing and rallies outside DC. The people who actually "act" in DC aren’t talking all day. They only talk more when they’ve lost power.
All of this underscores the structural differences between the risk-taking/get-thinks-done private sector and the federal government and its affiliated vast policy complex. The Beltway surely needs to learn more and become less arrogant and complacent. The entire national security regime requires an overhaul to remain agile and scalable. However, we must first acknowledge that politics and business are built differently, serve different purposes, and operate in fundamentally different ways. Ignoring these constraints will only worsen the status quo and waste time and resources—both of which are in short supply.
> My own narrative is twofold. First, as Matthew Yglesias pointed out in his recent piece, Shackling the State, the U.S. public sector has become increasingly over regulated since the 1970s, particularly at the federal level.
The current massive bureaucratic government was largely created by FDR and to a lesser extend LBJ.
When a new batch of politicians came into office, they were faced with a massive established bureaucracy that they could barely understand. As such the only way they could establish some semblance of control was to essentially create another layer of bureaucracy to try to control the existing bureaucracy.
And then yet another new batch of politicians come into office and are faced with an even larger established bureaucracy that they can barely understand...
I agree that the modern federal political machine was founded by FDR but the ever expanding process was by no means exclusively a Democratic administrations’ project. Both Eisenhower and Nixon massively enlarged the federal government machine and I would argue the establishment of EPA under Nixon was one of the most tipping point of the development of the modern U.S. administrative state. The difference being that, once, the federal government endeavored to build and it got a lot of stuff built. The DC metro system is the legacy of LBJ‘s Great Society project. And as this article concluded, DC is no longer a city with building fever.
And btw I am not very keen on the PPP approach to make the public sector more “efficient”. Judging from the experience of UK, the withering of in-house capabilities and over relying on out-sourcing has become a chronic headache for the public sector.
After spending the first 30 years of my life in DC, Cambridge, and New York, I eventually moved to a suburb of a mid-sized city, where the message it tells me is: “stop being such an insecure, pretentious narcissist”.
Would be interesting to have people comment on the vibe of the city they live in if not one of the five you mentioned.
I moved to nova in 2020 and lived in Maryland before that. I just can’t handle DC. Government work is just poison, and being around people that work in government is poison. The massive funnel of money flowing into DC and the natural beauty of the area can cover it up, but it’s really gone downhill in the last four years.
I’ve made up my mind to move at the earliest convenience.
I think my temperament is very New Yorker where I grew up and I’m in a money job, though livability in NYC is at a point where I’m heading to the sun belt. NYC doesn’t really have the vibe of the 90s anymore either.