An op-ed on the Brookings Institution site blasts the Dems for not taking on the problem of government reform. As its author, Paul Light, writes,
Much as it prides itself on being the party of federal workers, the Democratic Party has become the champion of the mid-level managers and poor performers who thrive in a seniority-based system.
Certainly we don’t want the federal or state governments to become callous employers paying little and offering little job security, but it would take a willfully blind person to think that there’s not a problem with the current culture of civil service. Tactically, attacking the problems of government reform head-on would give liberals more ammunition against conservatives who use government inefficiency as an excuse to shirk on public investment proper. The stakes are too high for the Democrats to treat it as a union vs. union-busting issue. Besides, whatever the 2002 elections were about, the Democrats’ stance on the Homeland Security bill made voters feared them as the party of bloated government bureaucracy. Of course, bureaucracies do accomplish things smaller organizations cannot, and some inefficiency will be inevitable. But liberals would have more credibility in making that argument if they addressed the issue properly.
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