Government formation

So even though nobody seems inclined to use the little comment box, I still get occasional emails about this here site. For example, Miss WN of LA, CA, wrote me just the other day, pointing out that I never write about the election per se. See, Miss WN just became a U.S.A. citizen last month, and so the whole being represented in the government she's lived under for the last decade thing still has that new toy feel for her.

In so asking, she inadvertently hit upon an excellent answer to my question of 6 February, in which I asked what sort of things are so focused on dumb people that it is impossible for one who wants to be informed to get full information. Indeed, candidates have every incentive to not tell you how they go about doing the business of governing.

I think it's obvious to all of us that the administration of the government of the U.S.A.---the largest bureaucracy in the world---is an incredibly complicated task. Yet we all seem to fall for the rhetorical illusion that the presidency is all about a few policy issues regarding firefighters and people who have sex without a female present. But no, it's mostly a matter of budget-writing and hiring issues---the sort of thing that most managers deal with. Yeah, the grand vision thing manifests itself in there somewhere, but it's not what we most need to know.

Political Scientists refer to the cabinet selection process as `forming the government', since the cabinet members are the people who will truly implement the laws (which they see fit to implement) and will interpret how those laws should manifest themselves in the day-to-day affairs of the government.

Unfortunately, it is basically impossible to ascertain who a president-elect will choose for his cabinet this early on. We know that the person will have the general worldview of the party: the Republican pool of potential secretaries of the interior is entirely separate from the Democrat pool of potential secretaries of the interior. This means that yes, the election does matter, and even if all the candidates are just f.ing liars, one side will definitely do things differently from the other side.

[I fondly recall the Gush v Bore debate, in which our now-president tried his hardest to position himself as a pacifist, explaining how he's all (George) Washingtonian and doesn't believe in getting embroiled in foreign affairs. Yeah, we saw how that turned out. Gore, for his part, tried to talk himself up as a hawk.]

The other criterion for a cabinet secretary is that he or she has to be a competent high-level administrator with a few decades of experience in the field in question, which narrows the field immensely. The short list is typically short indeed: perhaps to three or four serious candidates for each party. That means that which Democrat is selected may have absolutely no effect on certain cabinet appointments.

[This is sort of where the government-as-democracy and government-as-bureaucracy intersect: Democracy requires frequent cycling of people at the helm, while bureaucracy requires experienced and stable people, so we wind up alternating between two small teams of experienced bureaucrats. If I had a spare lifetime, I'd write a whole lot more on this topic.]

Anyway, there you have it. We're not going to get any information about cabinet selection until it happens, because that seems to be custom, because it's such a painfully unglamorous question that nobody bothers to ask it, and because politicians don't want to expose themselves by talking more than they have to. But I think if we did get the remaining Democratic candidates to talk about this question, we'd find that the candidates' supporting teams which will do all the work would intersect an awful lot.

So, Ms NW of LA, CA, go ahead and vote for the candidate whose face you'd most like to stare at for four years, or the one whom you think is most likely to beat Dubya. The difference between Democrat and Republican is immense and important, but the differences in how one party will operate with a different figure at the head are relatively few and far between.