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I am a professor of public management, and have done research both on disaster response and the types of administrative burdens that Stephens references in his column. Stephens is not just wrong, he is wrong in a way that is deeply illuminating. 1/
Some obvious rebuttals here: is "big government" the problem? No.
The places with the best responses have political leadership that listened to and made use of competent bureaucracies, e.g. Singapore, Taiwan, Finland, S. Korea, NZ, Germany, Iceland. 2/
The places with the best responses have political leadership that listened to and made use of competent bureaucracies, e.g. Singapore, Taiwan, Finland, S. Korea, NZ, Germany, Iceland. 2/
Stephens ignores that the US system of govt is designed to be more subject to political control than other countries. Good govt reformers have argued for decades that thousands of political appointees lowers govt quality but conservatives in particular want responsiveness. 3/
The price of political responsiveness is that people who often lack great experience or capacity are put in charge of big tasks. Bureaucracies can manage without political leadership for routine tasks, but not for new tasks or ambitious decisions situations like a crisis 4/
As presidency scholar Peri Arnold points out, good bureaucracy cannot replace good leadership. If you have political appointees who are unwilling to listen and terrified a President who wants to ensure his re-election, the bureaucracy cannot fix that. 5/ https://twitter.com/PeriArnold/status/1248709035974680576?s=20
Trump's appointees were not good to start with. Their ability to perform well has been further weakened due to instability arising from Trump's preference for temporary officials, firing people and nominees that can't get Senate approval. 6/
You can't defeat a pandemic with a temp agency.
But across the federal government we have appointees who are some combination of unqualified, lack the trust of the President or Congress, and know they will be out soon. That is not a "big govt" problem. 7/ https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/07/trump-dismantled-the-very-jobs-meant-to-stop-the-covid-19-epidemic-173347
But across the federal government we have appointees who are some combination of unqualified, lack the trust of the President or Congress, and know they will be out soon. That is not a "big govt" problem. 7/ https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/07/trump-dismantled-the-very-jobs-meant-to-stop-the-covid-19-epidemic-173347
I could go through the failures of individual appointees, but they have been well-documented elsewhere. The point is the design of a federal govt dependent on this model of political leadership in integral to the same conservative approach to governing that Stephens champions. 8/
Ultimately, what is illuminating about Stephen's column is the lack of recognition of the cost of a decades- long attack on government competence.
He reflexively recycles Govt = Bad. Thread by @davekarpf makes this point better than I could. 9/ https://twitter.com/davekarpf/status/1248791672005238784?s=20
He reflexively recycles Govt = Bad. Thread by @davekarpf makes this point better than I could. 9/ https://twitter.com/davekarpf/status/1248791672005238784?s=20
There are other aspects to the conservative approach to governing we could get into - relying on public private partnerships that failed to deliver ventilators...10/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Stephens bemoans the rise in the number of federal employees in the FDA as evidence of the cause of the poor response to coronavirus.
What he won't tell you: federal civilian employment as a whole has stayed steady in nominal terms and declined as a share of the population. 11/
What he won't tell you: federal civilian employment as a whole has stayed steady in nominal terms and declined as a share of the population. 11/
Stephens is especially irate at the federal waiver process making it harder for state & local govts to help people.
What he won't tell you: Trump *appointees* at CMS & USDA used this process to make it harder for the poor to get healthcare and food 12/ https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/460218-trumps-food-stamp-rule-change-will-hurt-19-million-households
What he won't tell you: Trump *appointees* at CMS & USDA used this process to make it harder for the poor to get healthcare and food 12/ https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/460218-trumps-food-stamp-rule-change-will-hurt-19-million-households
What worries me is that the same people that have worked for decades to undermine governing capacity in a way that weakened the coronavirus response will persuade others that big lesson is that they were right all along. 13/ https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1238837998751559681?s=20
We need a real conversation about our expectations of government moving forward. There are fair criticisms of bureaucracy to be made from all sides of the political spectrum. But you can't get there with ideologues who always have the same answers regardless of the situation. 14/
This piece illustrates how the starve-the-beast philosophy of underinvesting in public capacity especially weakened our public health capacity to prepare for a pandemic (h/t @Bos_imm) 15/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/10/when-you-drown-government-bathtub-people-die/
Great interview from @JeremyKonyndyk that gets at a) how political leadership really matters when governments face non-standard crises that the bureaucracy has not turned into SOPs, and b) how Trump's leadership style undercuts bureaucratic response. 16/ https://www.vox.com/2020/3/5/21166093/coronavirus-covid-trump-response-fox-news
