The title of this piece is from the late Admiral Hyman Rickover. Admiral Rickover headed the efforts of the United States Navy to design and build nuclear-powered warships, and was intimately familiar with the dysfunction of the United States Government.
Examples of governmental dysfunction are countless, but among them:
- The IRS (is there a single human being on this planet that actually understands the Tax Code?)
- Congressmen introducing bills that are over 1000 pages long (Does anyone actually read them?)
- The military procurement system (Some items take so long to develop that they are obsolete by the time the military gets them.)
- The Veterans Administration System (The recent scandal involving false records of appointments to show they were doing better then they actually were says it all.)
- The Secret Service(They used to be good.)
All organizations have dysfunction to one degree or another, and these same organizations no doubt have a lot of good and competent people. Good people doing their jobs competently is what we expect, and the screw-ups should be invisible to the public. Taken as a whole, our government accomplishes a lot and delivers a lot of service. Due to its' staggering size, though, the waste and incompetence can appear to be staggering. Unfortunately, the system has evolved into something that can probably never be fixed (we probably couldn't even agree on what "fixed" is.)
Rickover had a strong personality and high expectations, and was able to be successful more often than not. If he could see us today, he would probably be thinking that the button slid completely off the pie.
