Re-Re-Reinventing Government. Again

In the spring of 1936, Franklin Roosevelt put two dozen fresh-from-school PhDs in a room in Washington, with orders to find ways to bring a rapidly growing federal government to heel. The idea was to make the bureaucracy run more efficiently—which is to say, to make it answer more directly to the President. Roosevelt wasn’t worried about runaway government spending but about losing control. “We have got to get over the notion that the purpose of reorganization is economy,” the President told Louis Brownlow, the man in charge of the PhDs. “The reason for reorganization is good management.”

On Jan. 13, Barack Obama became the latest in a long line of Presidents to try his hand at bringing good management to the capital. In a speech announcing his desire to streamline and reform the government, he said he would begin by merging a collection of six agencies and offices into one yet unnamed cabinet-level department dedicated to trade and competitiveness. Obama promises modest savings—$3 billion over a decade—and great leaps in efficiency. Merging bureaucracies, he says, will make the government more responsive to business. He opened his speech by noting in the audience “all sorts of small business people,” the most desirable of constituents this campaign season. Certainly the timing—January of an election year—is not an accident. But if Obama’s plan works, it will do more than help the President. It will increase the power of the Presidency, no matter who wins in November.