You may recall an editorial that ran in these pages last month announcing another organization with—a popular adjective in these parts—American in the name. American Moment, which has been the subject of some in-the-round conservative press theatrics of late as a placeholder for realignment efforts within the GOP, will work towards “identifying, educating, and credentialing” the young people needed to staff a realigned Hill or a realigned executive branch. Its three founders are young even by the standards of D.C., a town run by 25-year-olds in night school who look 16, overseen by 45-year-old alcoholics who look 60. 

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with two of these Zoomer princelings, Saurabh Sharma and Nick Solheim, for a podcast conversation to discuss my TAC  March/April cover story on conservative environmentalism. We also discussed the personnel problem they are hoping to help solve. Since all of us—thankfully, I think, since it’s more fun for me—live in a world where expertise is dead by suicide, I was invited to opine on the administrative state as I experienced it in my brief appointment to the EPA. 

Let me repeat myself from the podcast and expand on a few points. It would take a kind of swamp creature to drain the swamp. (Yes. Whatever you’ve heard otherwise, let me assure you, it remains decidedly undrained.) The levers of power in the executive bureaucracy are extremely complicated, do not behave reliably, and are sometimes replaced with toggles and buttons when you’re not looking. The civil service is full of well-intentioned professionals, but they are institutionally obligated, consciously or not, to put the interests of their agency or department above executing the political agenda of any given administration. Process reigns over product; the career staff keep the reins well polished and aren’t too worried about feeding the horses. That’s the political appointees’ job. 

This, of course, means it helps to have been around for a while. When in a midsize to smallish agency like the EPA 120 or so appointed officials are supposed to steer a ship of about 14,000 sailors (the metaphor is exactly as confusing as the experience), it’s important that everyone at least speak the same language, metaphorically. The grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of that language is a mix of legalisms and long-built up office culture and expectations—the norms establishment media are so fond of. Each bureaucracy has its own dialect and together they make the barbaric tongue of something almost like power. But it’s hard to tell if fluency is a) possible, or b) desirable. 

For if someone has been in and out of the executive and on and off the Hill often enough to speak this language, it seems probable that they have become comfortable. Comfortable people don’t, as a rule, reform the systems that made them comfortable. They tend to be, no matter how radically progressive in speech they might sound, positively conservative about the institutions they are affiliated with. The executive branch is a messy pile of self-perpetuating institutions, self-perpetuating, because they are made up of people, top and bottom, whose status is dependent on these things being perpetuated. People might take a paycut to serve the nation, but they’re not going to cut their status; no, that’s what stays, or at least what most people cling to, in and out of civic office.

Some people think the administrative state is like Sauron’s ring or, to go to Tolkien’s source, the Andvaranaut: cursed gold, destined to corrupt its wearer, or turn them into a dragon. Others might argue it is more comparable to the palantir or seeing stones of Arnor; it is a neutral tool used for good of old, that has been overshadowed to bad ends, but could be remastered by a rightful heir of Isildur. I’m of mixed minds about it, probably deluded, but I stay in D.C., so perhaps I have an answer after all. 

You can listen to the podcast episode here.