Abstract

What About This Bureaucracy?

U.S. President Harry S. Truman's announcement that he intends to overhaul and streamline the multitude of offices in the executive branch of the government and the start already made in the Labor, State, and Commerce departments have raised the old cry of "Washington bureaucracy." This epithet has long been thrown at New Deal officialdom, and especially at the war-created agencies. It is an opposition term, a pejorative that says plainly that Washington procedures are usually incompetent, often unnecessary, and possibly suspect. Government employees in Washington are out of touch with responsible public opinion. Indeed, they are supposed to remain out of touch in order to retain their official integrity. According to the author, the American administrative system is outmoded. It clashes with modern notions of the procedures proper to a democracy. It smothers responses and adjustments to the country's changing needs.