Undoing the damage wrought by
the Bush administration’s arrogance and incompetence will be one of
President-elect Barack Obama’s biggest challenges, whether in Iraq,
Wall Street, or the halls of Washington. For eight years, the Texas
Republican subjected the federal bureaucracy to an instrumentalist
governing strategy long-favored by the conservative movement. Thomas
Frank describes it as “capturing the thing and running it for their constituents’ benefits.”
In short, Bush hollowed out the civil service by firing political opponents (i.e. U.S. Attorney David Iglesias or the EPA’s Mary Gade) and hiring incompetent but movement-friendly bureaucrats (i.e., the Justice Department’s Monica Goodling). He also drove down the wages of government service and outsourced key government jobs to contractors with conservative bona fides, devastating worker morale in the process. All in all, he made Washington a pretty dismal place to work. And the public suffers when the crucial oversight provided by federal workers is devalued.
The good news is that Obama seems poised to correct the problem. The Wall Street Journal explains:
President-elect Barack Obama is signaling by a combination of words and deeds that his administration will toughen regulations at federal agencies that oversee consumer products, environmental policy and workplace safety.
Mr. Obama has named a number of people to his transition teams for regulatory agencies who favor a firmer government hand in overseeing industry behavior. In addition, Mr. Obama has indicated in a series of pre-election letters to a big federal employee union that he intends to take a more pro-union approach on labor questions than his predecessor, and give agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency more money.
That Obama is focusing on labor reform and the EPA is great news, especially because workplace-safety regulations, employee family-leave policies, and parts of the Clean Air Act will soon be up for an overhaul. Doubling the budget for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) will also go a long way towards correcting what Rick Perlstein has dubbed "e-coli conservatism."
Illinois' own Rep. Jan Schakowsky -- a legislator with a deep background in consumer protection -- told the Journal that she believes Obama's agenda “is going to be bold.”
Schakowsky also mentioned that the Obama transition team is looking at a number of “activists and advocates” to lead key agencies. If the sources of The Washington Post’s Al Kamen are to be believed, some of them might hail from the Land of Lincoln. Kamen puts both Cara Smith, deputy chief of staff to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, and Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger, on the short list to lead the CPSC based on their extensive records working on crib safety issues.
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