THE WASHINGTON POST, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1 0, 1 9 80.
ÛÏThere is a profound and pervasive commitment in this country today to not letting anything happen. Û</br></br>Personalities and political theology dominate the Washington news as the Reagan Cabinet heaves into viewÛÓlots of talk about moderates versus conservatives and supply-siders versus traditionalists and the rest. It all matters, but not decisively. What will matter decisively to Ronald ReaganÛªs prospects for success is something else: whether he will be able to take on and, to some extent, defeat that great decadent inertial force that characterizes so much of our governmental (and intellectual) life today.</br></br>Do I mean the Washington bureaucracy? Well, yes, in a wayÛÓbut that is only part of it. I mean as well a collection of impulsesÛÓto trivialize, confound, procrastinate, fog over and subvert both thought and actionÛÓthat are at work in many more bureaucracies than just the one on the Potomac that everyone complains about.</br></br>There is a profound and pervasive commitment in this country today to not letting anything happen. It (whatever is the problem at hand) is routinely declared to be much more complex than that (ÛÏthatÛ being whatever the proposed solution may be). So, instead, it is ; duly noted that the situation must be | studied and made the subject of conferences and reports and hearings and pilot | projects and citizensÛª lobbies and benefit ! galas and maybe, with a little luck, it will end up getting a presidential commission or even a Cabinet department of its own.</br></br>Then everyone can settle back and make the situation, whatever it was, a little worse, and get paid for it.