Forget DEI or Culture, Parkinson’s Law Explains Secret Service’s Problems
“I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.” Those are the words of Ronald Rowe Jr., acting head of the Secret Service, while testifying before Congress.
Sen. Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas, suggested he might know what Rowe said he doesn’t, that the Secret Service has “a cultural problem.” At the Manhattan Institute, scholar Christopher Rufo has expressed with more certitude what he seemingly always does about every problem, that the Secret Service “has highlighted ‘diversity’ as a key priority” over simple competence.
A better answer can be found in the fact that Harry Truman didn’t even employ a Secret Service that can presently claim 7,500 employees. Or, that when Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently visited the United States, he brought his own protection team over one that would otherwise have been supplied by the state.
The Truman and Netanyahu anecdotes are telling examples of what California businessman Bob Reingold refers to as the bureaucracy problem. Forget DEI, culture and all the expected arrows that have and will be lobbed at the Secret Service, and get back to first principles: in Reingold’s words, “all government bureaucracies fail.” In other words, the problem with bureaucracy is bureaucracy, not the inevitable (and near tragic) effects of what happens over and over in government, and without regard to which Party or ideology is at the controls.
Reingold bases his thinking on business experience, but also the essential writings of early 20th century British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson. While analyzing the Royal Navy, Parkinson found that “the number of the officials and the quantity of the work are not related to each other at all.”
Which makes sense in ways that we all know intuitively. Think the truism about not giving an important task to someone who isn’t busy. Parkinson happened on the previous truth a century ago with his observation that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” So true, and it gets us closer to understanding what happened in Butler, PA.
The Secret Service didn’t have a man, or womanpower problem, rather it had a bureaucracy problem. 7,500 employees to handle what used to be handled by many fewer vivifies the conceit of bureaucracies that effectiveness can be bought with a bigger head count.
Not only is quantity and quality of work unrelated to the size of staff, it frequently brings both down. Parkinson knew why. From observing the growth of administration within the Royal Navy in concert with substantial declines in actual servicemen, Parkinson found that in practice “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.” In short, manpower growth within bureaucracies doesn’t enhance their effectiveness, rather it expands the number of mediocrities vying for their own growing fiefdoms amid rising sloth within an ever growing org chart.
Which should be a statement of the obvious. Rare is the bureaucrat who hires someone better than he, since to do so is the same as hiring one’s replacement. Instead, and as bureaucracies grow, the incompetence spreads throughout the organization, thus increasing the likelihood that its expressed mission will be carried out quite a bit less effectively by many more people.
Back to Truman in the 1950s, and Netanyahu now, it’s not as though heads of state were less at risk than they are now. The major difference is that thousands more men and women are in the Secret Service’s employ today to do less well what many fewer men did in the mid-20th century. In other words, Prime Minister Netanyahun understands now what the Trump presidential campaign almost learned in tragic fashion: the size of the Secret Service is not indicative of its effectiveness. It likely signals the opposite.
This article was originally published by RealClearMarkets and made available via RealClearWire.
