I spent the majority of this morning applying for a passport at a US Passport Office in Atlanta, Georgia. After finding forms online, printing them out, filling them out, making an appointment (by phone, of course), standing in line, waiting, standing in line again, being told I had to get a second picture despite getting the first one at a Passport Office-official vendor, going back, being condescended to due to my non-student status, and paying out a good chunk of money, I now cross my fingers and hope to receive a passport.
This is how most people have to interact with government. It is at the Passport Office, the Post Office, the local school offices, the tax offices, the DMV, a construction inspector, and on, and on, and on. Most people don’t interact with government through sweeping policy reforms or through politicians’ promises to bring back [liberal or conservative] values to America. They don’t interact with the President, the President’s aides, or even many of the consequences of the President’s reforms (unless that’s making more bureaucrats, like with healthcare reform).
But this is where most people, when talking about politics and government, give their attention. They campaign for this presidential candidate or the other, for this senator or the other, for this school board member or the other. They know in their heart of hearts that if this candidate gets elected, things are going to get better. Government is going to get smaller, their healthcare will get cheaper, and they will become happier.
Except then it rarely happens that way.
The few reforms that do get passed are usually muddled moderate reforms that maintain their campaign promises in name only. A few years go by — 2, 4, 6, 8 — and the politician leaves office, only to be replaced by another.
What doesn’t change overall is the average person’s interaction with the government. The bureaucrat at the DMV keeps his job when a new president, governor, or city councilman is elected. The school “curriculum administrator” likely maintains his job through the next senatorial election. The shadowy figures behind the State Department who approve and deny passports, the ones at the Department of Homeland Security who set seemingly-arbitrary TSA regulations, and the people at the Department of the Interior who do who-knows-what all will likely keep their jobs.
Those who take power by appointment stay unless a major upheaval of governance comes along. A candidate who says she’ll abolish X Department rarely succeeds because the employees of X Department have a very strong vested interest in making sure she fails. Their colleagues at Y Department join in, worried they may be next. Sooner or later, it isn’t worth the political capital for the candidate to go after X Department. Nothing really changes. Slowly, over time, as legislation mounts and more power is ceded to the bureaucracy, it creeps towards growth. A department of 20 bureaucrats becomes 40 as more regulations are enacted — then 60 — then 80 — then 100 — then a new subdepartment, and the process keeps going.
Political leaders may come and go, but the bureaucracy remains. The people behind the curtain, actually making government go, aren’t elected and are nearly immune from elections. They are the perpetual government.