The left is having minor orgasms over L.F. Eason III who retired rather than fly the flags at "his lab" at half staff in honor of recently deceased Senator Jesse Helms and in obedience to gubernatorial proclamation. Why did he do it? He repeatedly states in interviews that he felt "a strong sense of ownership" over the lab.
A government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people is not a government where the employees act as if they own the place. When you get this attitude, you end up with mandarins who slowly hollow out representative government by introducing and then nurturing the idea that the bureaucrats can do as they please, training their putative political masters to no longer insist on obedience and accept that they to have become supplicants to the bureaucrats.
We're nowhere near even halfway along in the process. Every once in awhile some gasbag like this Eason character steps out into the light and gets swatted down. But what's truly disturbing is that this is a problem that affects politicians of all stripes and nobody makes an issue of it. The DoD rebels against Clinton and the right quietly averts its gaze. State rebels against GWB and the left practically cheers them on.
It's gone on long enough that routine disobedience to political direction has become entrenched. People don't bat an eye when they talk about this or that political appointee being "captured" by their department and becoming the bureaucracies emissary to the President instead of the President's man directing the bureaucracy. It's a gathering storm, more serious than Iraq, though the slowness of the political disease's progression gives us a lot more time to ponder the problem.
In the meantime, two cheers for the governor of North Carolina who didn't put up with this. It could only have been better if they had not straight off offered early retirement.
Posted by TMLutas at July 12, 2008 09:00 AM