Does getting to work at 8 and putting everything in the right pile really make the world go 'round, or is there still room for big ideas?
I've been reading quite a bit about the 9-11 commission and in particular about Mr. Richard Clarke, former Terrorism Advisor. One of the most interesting articles I've read recently is (no surprise) on Slate, and deals with President Bush II's baby with the bathwater approach to all of President Clinton's policies. In the article, Will Saletan talks about Bush's automatic assumption that what Clinton was doing was wrong as causing a disconnect in national terrorism policy. But it also hints at another issue, which I find more interesting, namely, does a step by step bureacratic approach accomplish more in the long run than sweeping policy changes?
As Saletan points out, most of the commentary from the Bush staff shows a disdain for what they call "swatting flies", "law enforcement", and a culture of regular meetings, in favor of bold new plans to eliminate terrorism rather than slow it down. While that may be a noble goal (debatable in my view, even assuming it's possible), someone still has to enforce the laws and swat the flies. And, as Clarke succinctly points out in his book (taken by me from an excerpt in Saletan's piece, as I have not read the book yet), regular meetings with all members of the counter-terrorism community (White House, FBI, CIA, NSA, Defense) in the summer of 2001 could very well have "connected the dots".
I'm no fan of bureacracy or of meetings. In fact, you can hear me regularly bemoan the tendency at my Fortune 3 employer to schedule meetings to determine when the next meeting should be. But its hard not to admit that they are a necessary evil. If everything worked perfectly, then everyone would know what they needed to do, do it, and tell anyone else who needed to know what they did. But as the real world points out, painfully time and again, we do not live in the above perfect world. Are constant meetings the best way to encourage cooperation and information-sharing between agencies? Certainly not, there are many better ways. But unless you have one of those better ways in place and can make it work, you better just keep the wasteful meetings going in the meantime.
National Security Advisor Rice said that "The key here was not to have a meeting. The key was to have a strategy." This seems incredibly naive to me. While big ideas and getting things done smarter are great goals, you'd best be sure you're paying the bills in the meantime.
I'm not sure I'm ready to declare the "Big Idea" dead, but I do think it's important to recognize that while "Man cannot live by bread alone" to quote President Bush's favorite philosopher, bread is pretty important. It seems inevitably that the small stuff is what derails the most lofty ideals.
Notes:
Another Slate Article by Fred Kaplan on Clarke's claims
Bureaucracy, a game by Douglas Adams
Speaking of whom, Have you heard about the Hitchhiker's Guide movie coming in '05?
(Featuring Marvin the Paranoid Android, played by Wicket!)
