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November 23, 2002

Homeland Security: the view from inside the Beltway

Last Thursday, Al Hunt's "Politics & People" column in the Journal including the following paragraph:

"To be sure, President Bush played the politics of homeland security brilliantly. The White House and most congressional Republicans resisted calls for a new agency for nine months after Sept. 11. But the GOP then used it effectively in the midterm election to knock off a handful of Democrats."
Perhaps. But let me offer another interpretation of events. Recall those scary weeks following 9/11, when no one knew to what extent the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon were merely the opening acts of a broader offensive. Informed opinion was rife with speculation about dirty bombs, anthrax, shipping containers filled with unimaginable horrors being unleashed upon our centers of population. The clear priority for our law enforcement and intelligence agencies was to detect and prevent future attacks.

In this environment, embarking upon a major reorganization of our intelligence and law enforcement communities would have diverted significant resources and management attention away from terrorism. As a former management consultant, I can attest that all organizations' efficiency and performance are adversely effected by the process of organizational change. Any person, no matter how patriotic and well-motivated, can't help but be distracted by questions like who will they report to?, will their jobs be secure?, will the scope of their power and responsibilities change?, etc.

Therefore it probably made a lot of sense not to dilute the attention of the domestic security agencies until the extent of the immediate terror threat could be assessed and defeated. Once this was accomplished, and the true dimensions of that threat were better understood, it was then appropriate to consider how best to organize to meet this new challenge.

It might be a naive and old-fashioned notion, but perhaps the Bush administration's decisions regarding the new Homeland Security Department were motivated by an attempt to actually serve the interests of the American people, rather than merely political calculation. Whatever the motivation, delaying the largest reorganization of the federal government in the last 50 years until more than six months after the terror attacks was clearly sound management.

But am I alone in finding it offensive that so many of the Beltway pundits appear to be incapable of thinking of anything in other than political terms? Maybe we need term limits for journalists and the Washington pundocrats so that they can remember what real life is like.

November 23, 2002 at 07:14 PM | Permalink

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