WP: RIchard Clarke and the Rise of the Heroic Bureaucrat

[DeepModem Mom]

The Wonk That Roared
Richard Clarke and the Rise Of the Heroic Bureaucrat
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page D01


....Despite his procedural virtuosity, no one could call (Richard) Clarke a pencil-pusher. No, he's pistol-packing. He writes that, late on the night of the attacks, "I had to get back to the White House and begin planning to prevent follow-on attacks. I found my Secret Service-issued .357 sidearm, thrust it in my belt, and went back out into the night, back to the West Wing."

Richard Clarke: The alpha-bureaucrat.

The political controversy over Clarke's book centers on his explosive charge that the White House failed to prepare adequately for Sept. 11, 2001, and that President Bush and top aides were determined to find a link to Saddam Hussein to justify a long-planned, counterproductive invasion of Iraq. The White House has branded Clarke a self-promoter who became disgruntled after being passed over for a higher post.

However that high-stakes political battle turns out, Clarke's book has given America a vivid glimpse of culture clash at the highest level of government. The protagonist is a career civil servant with an ability to amass unusual amounts of power and make himself indispensable in a crisis. The antagonists are politicians and political operatives and other bureaucrats, people who fail to schedule the high-level briefings they need, who don't heed the civil servant's warnings, who drop the ball time and time again.

Clarke's book provides an archetypal figure that has been relatively rare in popular culture or political discourse: the Heroic Bureaucrat. As a general rule, Americans have viewed bureaucrats as irritating figures. In common speech, to be "bureaucratic" is to be obsessed with procedure and prone to inertia....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30216-2004Mar27.html

[SharonAnn]

1. Wow, great article! Thanks.

eom

[lindashaw]

2. Yes, it's a great piece but very frightening. Even my stockbroker

keeps telling me, "The president will take care of us." In your dreams!

[molly]

3. Superb article - best definition of a bureaucrat I've seen

"Bureaucrats are seen as the kind of people who follow rules that make no sense and have nightmares about someone using a No. 1 pencil instead of a No. 2 pencil. A bureaucrat is someone who attends a long-delayed meeting on the topic of whether a task force should examine the chronic shortage of available meeting rooms."

[diamond14]

4. bush*'s problem is that he's pissed off a LOT of bureaucrats here

in DC....despite what bush* claims, it IS the bureaucrats who keep everything humming....and it's best to keep on their good side....

bush* dissed the government bureaucrats when he first seized the WH and has kept up a steady stream of crap against Government Employees for the past 3 years....

THAT is going to be another one of bush* blow-back MISTAKES....as more and more government employees are retiring, or simply quitting, and STANDING UP for AMERICA to tell the truth about the 'highly secretative' bush* criminals...

[DeepModem Mom]

5. shamelessly kicking, with appreciation...

for Clarke's Sunday show appearances today --