A bureaucracy is designed to keep functioning even when it is headed by a man who was suddenly told by his private-sector bosses to find a new job and whose only qualification is that he is the friend of a friend of the president. When faced with a situation, you pull out the plans and you follow the standard operating procedures. When hurricanes threaten the Gulf coast, you pre-position hospital and rescue ships offshore. You have a meeting beforehand and ask: âif this truly goes south â much worse than we are expecting â what things will we wish a month from now that we had done today?â? In the case of New Orleans, you know that there will be floods so you prepare to drop support from the air.
But here the plans were not pulled out of the filing cabinets, the standard operating procedures were not followed, and the âwhat will we wish we had done?â? meetings were apparently not held. In any other form of government besides that of the US â where the president has the formal legal powers of the 18th-century British monarch, and where each partyâs presidential candidate emerges from an undignified struggle among party activists â MrâBush would have been eased out by now. The barons of his party would have told him that he had to step aside.
Brad helpfully provides his Financial Times column on his own site. You should also navigate up to his lecture notes offering his view of economic growth since Deep Time. The conclusion: “By the Year 1, the Human Race Was Biologically and Technologically Successful â But Pretty Miserable”.