Deep State?

We are back from a road trip from Kentucky to Boston, immersing us in American history.

The idea of a “Deep State” goes back to the 1950s in what Eisenhower called the “Military Industrial Complex.” But the actual term “Deep State” didn’t gain much traction until Trump’s first term. Trump uses it to refer to the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who are not political appointees. They are the people who go to work each day implementing the programs set up by our elected officials in Congress.

A recent New York Times opinion piece by conservative commentator Nathan Levine argues that the Deep State is out of control and Trump is the first president to take it on in a meaningful way. He said that conservative candidates for decades have claimed they will take it on, but then little changes.

He says, “Our democracy has been usurped by a permanent ruling class of wholly unaccountable managers and bureaucrats.” He says the “anti-managerial” movement began with a 1941 book The Managerial Revolution by political philosopher James Burnham.

Levine quotes anti-dictatorship writer George Orwell as supporting Burnham. But the quotes actually come from a 1946 Orwell essay, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” and have the opposite meaning Levine implies. Orwell noted that Burnham was predicting Germany and Japan would win WWII because their dictatorial system was more “efficient” than our democracy.

In fact, Orwell points out, Germany and Japan lost the war largely because dissenting views were repressed. Resulting in really bad decisions like fighting the U.S., Britain, and the USSR all at the same time.

In fact, a “Deep State” and democracy go together and complement each other. Consider the case of cabinet level U.S. agencies like the EPA. In order for such an agency to do its job, it needs a staff of trained experts who are sheltered from political pressures. Protecting the environment involves regulating powerful industries like the fossil fuel industry. Without a “Deep State” protecting the independence of the EPA, how could they do the job mandated by our elected officials in Congress?

Trump followed the lead of Reagan in appointing agency heads who would prefer to shut the agencies down completely. But there is a limit in how much damage these heads can do, given that most people in each agency go to work each day focused on their mission.

Trump wants to change this by making ever more of these appointees into political appointees. We don’t yet know how this story ends. It depends how much he pushes his agenda, and it depends how much the courts rein him in.

The courts claim to be independent of public opinion, but in fact the courts are very sensitive to public sentiment. If the public understands the value of insulating public employees from political pressure, that will go a long way to ensuring that expertise can win out.

Back when Reagan was using the CIA to fund terrorist operations in Central America, a number of CIA officials quit in protest. Our Central America Response Network brought some of them to speak in Santa Barbara. When I invited one of them to speak here, he said he would do so as long as we weren’t expecting him to “bash” the CIA. He explained that the problem was not with the CIA. The problem was with the elected officials ordering the CIA to do horrific actions.

Is there a creeping bureaucracy that grows and never shrinks? Yes. But that is not the fault of civil servants. The conservative magazine National Review published an article “GAO Is the DOGE that Congress often Ignores.” The GAO is the General Accounting Office. Part of the “Deep State.” There are over 5,000 GAO recommendations that would save tens of billions of dollars. The problem is with elected officials who refuse to implement the recommendations.

Part of that problem lies with our corrupt campaign financing system where lobbyists can buy elections. But part of the problem lies with voters who vote with their tribe instead of by facts.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”