Transcripts For CSPAN QA Benjamin Ginsberg 20240714

With . Prof. Ginsberg absolutely. This is a true story and those who live in washington have probably heard versions of the story. I was at a dinner party and sitting next to me was a pretty senior hhs executive, someone whom i have known for a long time, very nice person. And she said to me, well, what are you writing these days . So i said, a colleague and i conducted a survey of washington officials. Because everyone is always surveying americans to see what they think of washington, we said, lets survey washington to see what it thinks of america. So we surveyed officials and what i will call members of the policy community, that is the contractors, who often are interchangeable with officials, people who work in think tanks, everyone involved in developing rules and regulations. So i said, we want to see what they thought of americans. In fact, my original title for this book was what the government thinks of the people. But publishers never like my titles, they always say my titles are no good. All right. They are not exactly like us. They are wealthier, they are whiter, they are better educated, they have different views on matters, and they think ordinary americans dont really know very much and that really the government should move according to its own ideas, not pay too much attention to what ordinary folks think. They felt the same way about congress, by the way. They dont have that much good to say about the president either. They thought that the only people who knew anything were other Public Officials. Thats who they talk to. Brian you say in your book that some 14 million americans are associated with the government in some way . Prof. Ginsberg some way, yes. Brian can you break it down . Prof. Ginsberg well, about between 2. 5 million and 3 million are actual federal Civil Servants, and then the rest consist of contractors. And, as you know, in many agencies, the contractors outnumber the actual Civil Servants. Department of education, department of energy. If you walk into an office, you dont know who is who. They call it a blended workforce. So there are the contractors, then in addition, we have all of the supporting groups. People who work in think tanks, in research foundations, and even people who work in lobby groups that are connected to particular government agencies. Environmentalists who are closely connected with the epa, the Environmental Protection agency, for example. So all in all, some 12 million to 14 million people, and these are the people who actually govern this country. Everything that we learn in high school and college, maybe even including in my own text book i am not sure, i will have to look and see everything that we learn is not exactly right, because what do we learn . We learn we elect a congress, it makes the law, the president executes the law, the courts review the laws, but that aint exactly how the system works. Much of what we think of as the law consists of rules and regulations written by bureaucratic agencies, by bureaucrats who are not elected by anyone and who often serve for decades. A lot of people like to talk about term limits for members of congress, which i think is a terrible idea, by the way, but the average length of service of a member of congress is eight years. Eight years. Whereas the average length of service for a senior nonelected official in our country is 26 years. So if those who think that term limits are important, they are looking in the wrong place. Brian as you know, there are very few factories of any kind around the washington, d. C. Area, but seven of the richest counties in the United States are all around washington, making on an average more than most places in the United States. Why is that so . Prof. Ginsberg well, first of all, federal Civil Servants are themselves well paid. And they say they are not. The general line is that they are not as well paid as people in comparable positions in the private sector. Well, there arent exactly comparable positions in the private sector. When you look at the total package of pay, Retirement Benefits plus the job security, which cant be beat except by tenured professors this is a package of remuneration that is excellent, and in many families, you have two Civil Servants, and sometimes you have someone who is drawing military retirement and working as a Civil Servant. So thats a starting point. The average salary the average remuneration, according to the office of Personnel Management data, is considerably higher than average americans. Second, surrounding this group, we have lobbyists, lawyers, all the folks who work to try to get the first group to do what they want. This is a city where we have k street. We have several hundred thousand people who work in the legal lobbying industry, have government contractors. So surrounding the capital are industries that dont produce smoke they do produce a lot of hot air, but no smoke or pollution, and this makes washington and its surrounding counties a very, very wealthy area and it affects the way that people here look at things. I mean, they may read a series in the Washington Post about rural poverty, but they are not familiar with it. They talk to other people in what we call the social safe way, where everybody goes. They live in a bubble. They talk to one another. Everyone they know is pretty welloff. The schools are very good. But they are not familiar with america. One thing that we did in our survey was to ask them basic questions about america. I got tired of all of these studies trying to show that americans dont know anything. My favorite you remember jay leno used to do his jaywalking routine . And i remember one time, they were out there asking people to name members of the Supreme Court. A lot of people named judge judy. This got a big yuck. But judge judy and Justice Ginsburg could be confused. They kind of look alike, they went to the same high school. Did you know that . James Madison High School in brooklyn, along with chuck schumer, and a lot of people went there. So at any rate, when we asked federal Civil Servants to tell us about america, they didnt know that much. They didnt really have a good idea of what americans incomes were. They didnt have a good idea of what their level of education might be. They didnt have a good idea of the sort of racial and ethnic composition of america. Interestingly, too, they didnt have a good idea of what ordinary americans thought. Now, if you look at the views of ordinary americans, compare them to the views of Civil Servants, they are different. But they are less different than Civil Servants think. Civil servants think that ordinary americans have views that are very, very different from theirs. Why . Well, psychologists have a concept they call false uniqueness. If you think someone is really dumb, you cant possibly think that they think the important thoughts that you think. You think they must think other things, and thats what our Civil Servants believe. Ordinary americans cant possibly have the same exalted thoughts that we do. So the survey was very revealing, beginning with differences in income and going on to the fact that federal Civil Servants dont really know much about america. In fact, one of the suggestions we make, and i will get a little bit ahead of the game, is that we send more Civil Servants out to learn about america, that we rusticate them. Now, in many agencies, plenty of people work in regional and local offices, but at the policy level, hardly anyone steps outside washington except to go on vacation. There is no reason why the top officials of the department of energy or the department of commerce need to be in washington. Some people say they dont do much anyway. So let them spend time in the regional offices where they get to rub shoulders with ordinary folks because lots of studies show that bureaucrats who live among ordinary people develop more sympathy for them. Brian where would we find you on a normal day . Prof. Ginsberg where would you find me . Well, lets see. You might find me taking dance lessons, which i enjoy. You might find me walking my dogs and going to dog training, but youd probably find me in the university. Brian what university . Prof. Ginsberg Johns Hopkins. Brian and what do you teach . Prof. Ginsberg i teach political science. Brian you talked about this word in the book. If somebody listens to your last couple of minutes, they might say, wow, that guy is cynical. Prof. Ginsberg well, i hope so. Cynicism is very important. I tell students that cynicism is the beginning of wisdom, because you have to look realistically at the world of politics. The germans have a term, realpolitik see i have got my r rolling realpolitik, which means realism. We cynics try to be realistic. We dont take what politicians say at face value. You know what, we found that they break their promises lots of times, they make up things. For them, words are weapons designed to garner our support. So we need to be able to understand whats really going on in politics. Politics is usually about power, money, status. It is not about truth, justice, and the american way. Brian well, let me show prof. Ginsberg i wish it was. Brian let me show some video right now to go along with what you just said. Prof. Ginsberg ok. Brian and we will come back and get your view of this. [video clip] pres. Kennedy there will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in cuba by the United States armed forces. Pres. Johnson it is my duty to the American People to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas and the gulf of tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action and reply. Pres. Reagan we did not repeat did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we. Vp cheney simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. Pres. Obama under the reform we seek, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your private Health Insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period. Brian its all really taken from your book. Prof. Ginsberg i recognize those scenes. I always thought Lyndon Johnsons nose was getting longer as he spoke, but perhaps thats just my imagination. Well, these are excellent reminders of something that is hard for us americans to remember, and that is that to politicians, words have a different purpose than they do to you and me. When we talk, we exchange information. We might exchange emotions. We see that as the ordinary use of language. To a politician, words are weapons. They are the weapons of political warfare, and politicians choose their words, their ideas, with a view toward capturing and exercising power. So words are often designed to persuade us of something that is in the politicians interest. Now, i would point viewers to the most recent president ial election, because i thought it was a remarkable exercise in realpolitik. Here we had politicians pretty nakedly pursuing power. Right . There was no pretense at this point. They would say or do whatever seemed useful to win power, and if that turned out not be useful, they would shift and Say Something else. So for example, secretary clinton famously castigated donald trump for asserting that he might not accept the results of the election. Well, that was when she thought she was going to win, and it was different when it looked like he was going to win. So i think this those who view this election objectively, rather than through their partisan lenses, saw politics for what it was. It is a struggle for power in which words are weapons, and these three videos that you showed us are videos of president s lying because it was convenient to do so. The weapons of mass destruction, nobody thought they were there. Nobody in the white house thought they were there, but it seemed like a good thing to say. The keep your doctor under the Affordable Care act, well, nobody in the white house thought that was true, but it seemed like a good thing to say. So, you know, we have all known people like that. People often at the heads of organizations are like that. They can change direction at the drop of a hat and show no embarrassment. So thats why im a cynic, and im a cynic because this is what i have observed, and i think if you are not a cynic, you are too easily taken in. I recommend to everyone, be more cynical. We always see in the press, oh, dont be too cynical. We cant be cynical. Who is more cynical than reporters . Right . So i think that in order to live in the political world, you have to understand what politicians are about. In ancient athens, they said that a citizen had to understand how to rule and be ruled. Both. Well, in our country, when we teach children about politics, we really only teach them how to be ruled. We tell them you should vote and do your jury duty and whatnot, but we dont tell them much about what rulers do. And the athenians felt that in order to be a good citizen, you had to actually understand the arts of politics, if only to protect yourself. So i think theres a lot of merit in their view. They werent cynics, i guess, but they were realistic. Brian you mentioned being a cynic, and a lot of definitions of you online is that you are also a libertarian. Prof. Ginsberg mmhmm. Brian is that true, and how often do you find libertarians in the academic world . Prof. Ginsberg well, thats a very interesting question. I am a libertarian on some issues. Ill tell you, the guy who writes the wikipedia article about me decided i was a libertarian, so there i am. I am a libertarian on many issues, but as to the because i feel that years ago, i took a class with milton freidman. And i thought, you know, theres something to what he says. That those folks who are spending other peoples money are very incautious with it, and the government is not always the best solution, sometimes its the problem. But as to how many libertarians there are in the university, well, i will leave that to your guess, but there arent hardly any. I mean, i think that most professors are liberal democrats. And when universities hire faculty, they hire people like themselves. There was an interesting book written last year in which to the two authors whose names i dont recall right now surveyed a conservative faculty. So they had trouble finding any. And they interviewed people, and they reported that one person they interviewed was so afraid of being found out by his colleagues that they had to conduct a clandestine interview in the arboretum where no one would see them. So there is a shortage. When universities talk about diversity, they quite rightly are interested in issues of race and ethnicity and gender, but intellectual diversity is not something that institutions of Higher Learning care much about, im sorry to say. Brian how did you do this survey . Prof. Ginsberg we sent out we obtained mailing lists and telephone directories from various civilian agencies and other organizations, and we sent out online about 2,500 questionnaires, and we got a pretty good response rate. We had about 850 respondents, and it was a long questionnaire. Brian how long . Prof. Ginsberg it was it took about 45 minutes to complete. Brian its in the book, though, isnt it . Prof. Ginsberg yes, its all in the book. The questionnaire is in the book. Brian 80some questions, i believe. Prof. Ginsberg yes, its a very long questionnaire, but this is a group that enjoys filling out forms, so they sat and filled them out. Now, if viewers think 850 is in is not very many a national , sample is usually about 1100 people, and those 1100 represent 300 million. So our sample was quite large, and moreover, we checked it against the Demographic Data provided by the office of Personnel Management, and our sample was spot on. It was a very socially, at least, a very good sample of the group we wanted to study. In national surveys, viewers may recall from the 2016 election, sometimes the samples, when they weight them to account for different groups in the electorate, they throw them off because the current electorate may not be exactly the same as the previous electorate. In our case, thats not a problem. Brian but you know, when you are talking about the Civil Servant and thats the bureaucrat and i assume thats what you mean they all come from somewhere else other than washington. Prof. Ginsberg they do. They do indeed. Brian so they have lived out there. Prof. Ginsberg they have. They have lived out there, but its been a while. 26 years on average for many of them at the upper levels. Thats a long time. So maybe they were from boise, idaho to begin with, but its been a long time since they were back there. And they lose their perspective. They tend to think like, dress like everybody else in washington. You are probably familiar with the idea of bureaucratic culture. Every Bureaucratic Agency has a culture. In the uniformed services, theres the right way, the wrong way, and the navy way. And in the navy, you do it the navy way or you are out. The same is true of every agency. If you dont learn to share that agencys perspective, you are an outsider. You cant succeed. So generally, over a few years, careerists developed the perspective of their agency. Its almost inevitable. Brian how does the government do when it comes to diversity compared to the rest of the United States . Prof. Ginsberg oh, very poorly. The Civil Service of the united the upper levels of the Civil Service are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. The rest of america is changing, but not our government. Brian why not . Prof. Ginsberg good question. First of all, the opportunities for change are less because people dont retire, long career paths. And the other is that they tend to hire people like themselves. The rest of us operate under rules that make us more diverse. They dont. Brian why is it so hard to fire somebody in the government . Prof. Ginsberg Civil Service rules make it virtually impossible. Not only impossible, but they make it so cumbersome, it takes so long brian why, why is this set up this way . Prof. Ginsberg to protect Civil Servants, who wrote the rules. Brian why do they get to do it, unlike the rest of the United States . Prof. Ginsberg you would have to be cynical to answer that question. Because they write the rules and they protect themselves. They write different rules for us. In most agencies, they dont really try to fire people because it is too cumbersome. They transfer them. So you have Civil Servants who get transferred around and finally wind up there are several offices where you have all the rejects that get transferred in there, and they dont do much during the course of the day. Brian what is the what are the politics of most Civil Servants . Prof. Ginsberg most are liberal democrats. Notice, for example, that the theres been a lot of commentary about the trump cabinet and sub cabinet, the number of people who are drawn from the military and from business rather than from government. And the reason for that is plain and simple. Government agencies are overwhelmingly liberal and democratic, and if you want to staff up with republicans, you go to the military or you go to business. You cant recruit from the upper levels of the government. Brian you get into the weeds in here with language that i assume i dont know the average person would have ever heard it before. And i am just going to read some of this stuff. You talk about the administrative procedure act of 1946. You talk about the office of information affairs, the unified regulatory agenda. Prof. Ginsberg i will tell you something, these are things that we need to know. These are things that people should be taught as part of civics. Brian why . Prof. Ginsberg these are critical to the way we are governed. For example, the administrative procedure act is the bible for regulatory agencies. When regulatory agencies write rules and regulations, these have under the terms of the administrative procedure act, they have to be published for what is called for notice and commentary. They have to be published and they have to solicit comments. And this is the basis for rule making in the United States. And rule making is the basis for our governance. Kids learn in school how a bill becomes a law through congress, but they dont learn how a rule or regulation is promulgated through the bureaucracy, which often is more important. Or you mention the office of information and regulatory assessment, oira. Well, this is a very, very Important Office in the White House Office of management and budget, in omb, because it is through oira that president s attempt to shape the regulatory and rulemaking agenda. Oira reviews regulatory proposals from the agencies and issues regulatory prompts to the agencies telling them what the president wants. Again, this is part of how we are governed that students dont learn. All they learn in civics is how a bill becomes a law, and what they learn about that is wrong, too. Its how a bill used to become a law. But they dont learn the basics of how we as americans are actually governed. If you want to know that, these terms that i mentioned shouldnt be obscure anymore. The apa, administrative procedure act, oira, critical things in our governance. Brian what is the 1979 paperwork reduction act . Prof. Ginsberg that is a piece of legislation, which is the name is sort of funny Small Business was complaining that they were required to fill out too many forms. So congress said, okay, were going to have a paperwork reduction act so they are not going to have to fill out so many forms. Actually, it led to more paperwork, as you might imagine, but it was under the paperwork reduction act that oira was created. Brian you get it. Executive order 12291, centralized president ial oversight of agency rulemaking. Prof. Ginsberg thats right. Under executive order 12291 and again, this is something that people should know, what are executive orders . A lot of our government today is run by executive order, executive memorandum. President obama said he was not going to issue as many executive orders as president bush had, so instead he writes memoranda. Its the same thing, but it lets you sort of weasel around it. Executive order 12291 was issued during the reagan administration, and in that order, reagan said that henceforward, rules and regulations promulgated by the bureaucracy would have to be sent to oira for review. When clinton came in, he then went a step further and said from now on, oira is going to send rules and proposals to the agencies, which we want them to do. Now, oira is the president s tool for controlling the bureaucracy, a very important president ial tool. But it is does not give the president any kind of absolute control. You know, de tocqueville said described the Roman Emperor he said, his power is ferocious, but its reach is limited. And the same could be said of the president and the bureaucracy. When the president wants them to do something, by god, they are going to do it, but they do 10,000 other things that the president doesnt take any notice of. Brian what impact did the Civil Service reform act of 1978 have on this town or this government . Prof. Ginsberg it enlarged the number of bureaucratic officials who were subject to president ial appointment, but that number is still small. Excuse me. When trump came in, there was a lot of talk about how many appointments he could make. But the number is maybe 4,000 of various sorts and i think it should be more. I think that if an election is to affect the bureaucracy, the president should be able to appoint more top officials. I dont know how many more. I dont agree with andrew jackson. Andrew jackson said, any american can do any job in government. Thats probably going too far. But i think there are a lot more americans who could carry out the peoples will as expressed in an election. So i think the number of federal officials appointed by the president should be increased. Brian so if President Trump office, bring your book with you, but you were given a few minutes to tell him what to be wary of, what would you say . Prof. Ginsberg well, i would tell him that in relation to the bureaucracy that bureaucratic agencies march along their own trajectories. They march according to their own drummers. If a president interferes with them, and they regard it as interference, a president and his appointees interfere, they will roll with the punch and try to resume the course they have set for themselves. Once the bureaucracy is created, it is very, very hard to change it, very hard to take control of it. You know, look at this is a terrible example, and people will be mad at me for using this, but mao zedong decided he was going to attack the chinese bureaucracy, and here he was the absolute ruler, and he lost a cultural revolution. The bureaucracy. Well, he is gone, and they are still there, so it is very, very difficult. My advice to any president is to try to appoint individuals who understand the agency but dont like what it is doing. You know, change agents, as they say. And trump has done this. I mean, several of the individuals he has appointed to head agencies were enemies of the agency. That is a start. The agencies eventually wear them down. You have to be very wary of this. Host there is a list of some 15 administrative agencies under the administrative procedures act. They are not all under that act. Prof. Ginsberg yeah. Host what is different about that agency than the department of state . Give us an example. Prof. Ginsberg the department of state, the department of defense, these are important agencies, but they dont engage in rulemaking aside from their internal housekeeping rules, so they do not issue rules that affect you and me. Whereas say the department of education, the various federal social agencies, they issue rules that have the effect of law on you and me. For example, even noaa, the National Oceanographic and the weather men, they have jurisdiction over several pieces of federal legislation where they issue rules and regulations, so, for example, noaa administers something called the Marine Mammals protection act, which you and i have never heard of, right, but, recently, someone was sent to prison for violating a noaa regulation under that act that prohibited harassment of marine animals. What did this person do . He ran one of these whale watching boats and he whistled at a humpback whale, which was deemed to be host he went to prison for that . Prof. Ginsberg he did. Indeed. He did, indeed. Whistling at a humpback whale, harassment of a marine mammal. You think this is crazy, right . Host let me read this from your book. According to one study, 131 major, generally defined as having a likely impact of 100 million or more, rules and regulations adopted by federal agencies between 20092012 imposed 70 billion in new costs to the american public. How do you know that . Prof. Ginsberg well, i didnt do this study, so i am citing host but how would anybody know that . Prof. Ginsberg economists try to look at the impact of the rule on the behavior of those affected by it. In that case, i think it was a rule governing corporate behavior. What did corporations do to follow this rule . One of the things they do is to staff up. In the banking industry, one of the reasons small banks have disappeared is because under sarbanesoxley, the quantity of staffing you need, accounting services, Legal Services that you need to comply with the the act is so substantial that only big banks can afford it. So that is a cost of regulation. Or you have to use one kind of fuel rather than another. Environmental regulations impose costs. So people who study these rules kind of estimate the costs. They are studied by private economists and by the Congressional Budget Office and by the White House Office of budget. The cost of regulation is very high. In fact, i saw a piece just recently, in the context of talking about why it is that the u. S. Lost manufacturing jobs in the past decade or so, one Study Suggests that about one million jobs were lost because of regulatory costs. That became a factor in corporations shifting those jobs overseas. Host you write that perhaps the public might learn why some cynical washington observers of the department of education say with apologies to churchill that seldom in the course of human events has so little been accomplished by so many. Prof. Ginsberg that was a little bit of snark on my part. Wasnt it . Host hmm. Prof. Ginsberg there are some agencies in washington, that being one of them, that most people who live in this town dont think they do much of anything. They do very little per person. Some agencies are extremely hardworking, no question, but there are others, and i would say education, energy, commerce, if rick perry had remembered the three he wanted to eliminate, those would be the three, where the output is not that great. This is a local prejudice. No one quite knows what they do there. Host what would you say to somebody who is deeply involved in washington who say, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about . Prof. Ginsberg they tell me that all the time. Host who says that . Prof. Ginsberg washington officials. They say, you have no idea how hardworking we are, how much we do for the people of the United States. You have no idea how much we value the views of americans, to which i say, i do have an idea, and you dont value what americans think. This is the first time this has been done, were going to make our questionnaire and results available. People can look at what we did, and hopefully people can move on from there. Host why did 800 plus people respond to your survey . Prof. Ginsberg isnt that interesting question . In the polling business, when you do telephone polling, most people dont want to respond. They dont want to waste their time. My view is that in the case of this survey, first of all, i am going to be snarky again. Will you forgive me . A lot of these people have nothing much to do. This was an amusement. And second, people who work in washington are selfimportant. Not unlike professors. I admit, we are selfimportant, too. But people who work in washington wanted to share with us their views because they thought what they did was very important. Host what determined for you that they think americans are idiots . Prof. Ginsberg idiots is too strong a word, but we asked them a number of questions that address that. We think we asked them, who do you think is competent . And they thought ordinary folks were not very competent, did not know very much. Do you think ordinary americans know anything about, and we gave them about 10 different questions, and their answers were generally, no, not very much, nothing at all. So from our survey, we got the very strong conclusion that Public Officials dont have much regard for ordinary americans. Host but in your book, when you talk about all of the language that is used here, why would americans know what this is, all these different acts and rules . I think you said that on average 900 rules are promulgated every year. Prof. Ginsberg americans would not necessarily know the details, but we asked at a very general level, do you think how much do you think ordinary americans know about economic affairs, international affairs, unemployment, you know, just basic things, and across the board, the officials in our survey said, no, not that much. They dont know much about those. I will tell you something. I will submit that Public Officials do know more than ordinary officials about all of these things. There is no question in my mind. But it doesnt justify this feeling that we should not Pay Attention to them, which we got from the survey. When i go to a doctor, i hope that they know more about medicine than i do. If they dont, im in big trouble. If i had to have dealings with an attorney, well, they better know more about the law than i do. What i am counting on is that the doctor, lawyer, accountant has a sense of fiduciary responsibility to me. Their responsibility is to find out what my needs are and to help me, you know, achieve those in the best possible way. If my doctor said, i really dont care what you think, this is what you need to do, that would not be very good. If my lawyer said, you are an idiot, i do want to hear more from you, this is what you need to do. That would be a breach of their responsibility. And i believe that federal Civil Servants also have a civic responsibility, and that responsibility is to learn about americans, not to not know, and to find out what americans think. Host what would be different for americans if they found out, and let me just add to that, you have 535 people elected every year to congress that supposedly represent the people, and you have a president that is elected every four years, and isnt it their responsibility . Prof. Ginsberg oh, it is. But let me first of all, we did a survey of congressional staffers. Ok . Congressional staffers knew a lot about the people, because they are in the electoral system. They meet with people. They had a very good idea of what the public thought, spot on. Absolutely, members of Congress Need to know, and, you know, despite all the disparagement, they do know. Most members of congress have a damn good idea of what their constituents think. They dont always agree, but they know what their constituents think. They know their job is to figure out how to at least try to implement things that their constituents want. The problem here is that congress doesnt have as much control over the bureaucracy as it should. The president doesnt have as much control over the bureaucracy as he should. Host who is to blame for that . Prof. Ginsberg who is to blame for that . Well, over the decades, i would say that the president and congress in particular have surrendered power. They have surrendered power after power to the executive. Host why is that . Prof. Ginsberg there are a number of reasons. There are reasons going back to the time of the new deal. President roosevelt was very impatient with the legislative process. Under his regime, congress began to enact pieces of legislation that were very broadly drawn. There is another thing americans should know. The nondelegation doctrine. If you dont know what that is, they should look it up. It is very important. The nondelegation doctrine is the idea that the power exercised by congress was given to it by the American People, and congress cannot in turn give that power away to anybody else, so what does that mean, practically speaking . It meant that when congress wrote a law, the law had to be very explicit about what the executive branch could do. But during the roosevelt era, that doctrine was lost sight of. The courts turned away from it. So congress can write broadly drafted pieces of legislation that the executive branch will then implement through its own rules and regulations, but there is a lot of leeway. The courts have been guilty, too, because the courts have a principle of deference. They defer to administrative agencies. They say only the agencies know what the law really required and it is not our job to question them. So, you know, you have agencies writing rules and regulations under laws that might have been written 80 years ago. Who is to say what Congress Really wanted . You know, just the other day, the department of labor wrote new regulations under the tafthartley act. Viewers probably know the tafthartley act was written in 1936, but it still becomes a source of power for an agency today. And the courts will say, well, the agency knows the law, so it is their job. So that is one factor. Another is that congress has not stepped up to the plate when it comes to oversight. Legislative oversight of the executive branch is very difficult. It is unglamorous. It is hard work, and congress, most members of congress only get into the oversight game if something bad happens. People call it fire alarm oversight. If the alarm bell is ringing, then they will hold hearings, but the daytoday oversight, that is kind of a lost art. Host when did you first get interested in this . This is book 24 for you . Prof. Ginsberg Something Like that, yes. Host you have written a lot about government over the years. Prof. Ginsberg i was inspired by the university, which is a huge bureaucracy in which the faculty has no power. Host which one . Which university . Prof. Ginsberg at the time, it was cornell and Johns Hopkins. This has been happening over the years and it colored my view of the rest of the world. Perfectly honest. But i did write about university faculty, which shows this phenomenon in the university setting. But that is what really started me thinking about bureaucracy and its evils. Like everyone else, i was taken in by the sort of civics book interpretation of the world, how we elect representatives, and they write the law. But i, you know, as i looked at the real world, as i cynically looked at the real world, i thought, this is not so. I wish it was so. I really do. You know what they say, a cynic is a disappointed idealist and i will confess that. The real world was one in which we were not governed by people who were elected so much as by people who were appointed and served year after year and marched according to their own drummer. One out of our findings, you know, we looked at the regulatory agenda over the course of the year, and we compared it to public opinion. We compared it to the legislative agenda, to the president s agenda as expressed in orders and whatnot, and we found that the regulatory agenda was highly correlated with the attitudes of bureaucrats. It was not associated with Anything Congress wanted. It was not associated with what ordinary americans wanted. It was not Even Associated with what the president wanted. The regulatory agenda could be predicted by the attitudes of bureaucrats. And i would say to viewers, that is not how to run a democracy. That is not democratic government as far as i am concerned. Host well, your book, you point out in the same vein, Franklin Delano roosevelt and the new dealers viewed the welfare institutions and entitlement programs they constructed more in terms of political power than moral principle, and later on, a republican example of the instrumental character of principles is the gop emphasis on religious and moral appeals over the past quarter century. What is partially in your book is to suggest that the politicians on both sides will do whatever they have to do to get elected. Prof. Ginsberg that is for sure. Host why not the administrative agencies who sit there on a 26year average . They are working off of the law, and they are not working off of whether they get elected. Why wouldnt that be a better position . Prof. Ginsberg there is something good about politicians working to get elected, because if you are working to get elected, you have to pay some attention to what voters think, even if all you want to do is manipulate them. You still have to Pay Attention to them. Our federal bureaucracies are insulated from all that. They dont know what people think, and they do not care what people think. Again, maybe they do know more than the average american. Host thats not every Civil Servant. Prof. Ginsberg no, not everyone. But the aggregate. We are not talking about individuals. We are talking about the aggregate. On the aggregate, they dont think americans know very much and dont really care, and that is what makes them different from my doctor or lawyer. If i perceive that my doctor doesnt care about me, and that cant be true because my wife is my doctor, so i know she cares, but if i perceive that my doctor doesnt care about me, i might get a different one. Well, if a Government Agency doesnt care about me, forget it, they just dont care, and moreover, attorneys, physicians, accountants, they are all taught that they are supposed to Pay Attention. Host is your wife really a doctor . Prof. Ginsberg yes. Host so she is your doctor. Prof. Ginsberg she is. Host where did you grow up . Prof. Ginsberg chicago. This is another part of my education in cynicism. I grew up in the great city of chicago under the reign of the late mayor richard daley. It was said that chicago did not have bike paths, so they put up signs even on lakeshore drive, and it was now a bike path. It was said chicago didnt have hills. Sanitation workers put out garbage and rolled grass over them. And mayor daley said, we now have more hills than others. If that does not make you cynical, i do not know what will. Host what was your family like . Did you have brothers and sisters . Prof. Ginsberg im from a workingclass family, but i had no brothers or sisters. Host who had the biggest impact on you early politically . You mentioned milton friedman. Prof. Ginsberg the person who had the greatest impact was a late famous professor of International Relations named hans j. Morganthal. I remember as a kid, as an undergraduate, sitting in his class, i was too timid to ever raise my hand, but i thought, wow, he has a vision of the world that is so strong, so important, i want to try to learn to think like he does. I would suggest to many college students, freshmen in particular, that they sit quietly, not voice their opinions. They dont know anything. I sat very quietly and learned. Host one of the things we have not talked about at all that kind of weaves through your book is aristotle and confucius and plato and diogenes, and nico, if i can pronounce it, ethics. What is that all about from your standpoint . Athens and athenian thinking. Prof. Ginsberg very often when we are trying to learn, it is important to go back to First Principles. You look at the First Principles on which we have often diverged, gotten confused, and the ancient athenians were the first to encounter democracy and plato and aristotle wrote about what is democracy, what is it all about, so plato and other athenian thinkers thought that officials should be subject to the annual audit, and all Public Officials in athens were audited every year. It was not simply a financial audit, but the popular assembly, the ecclesia, they would hear competing views about whether this official did a good job or not. Even priests and priestesses were subject to the audit, an interesting idea. And officials who were found wanting were dismissed. Now, that audit was, you know, sort of the ancestor of our election, but we have exempted most of our officials from it, and i think that is a mistake. Andy jackson had a good idea. He went too far with it, but Public Officials need to some extent to be in the political arena. Host what is your guess, and i know you may not what to touch it what is your guess President Trump will, after four years, when he looks at the government, what will he have accomplished . Not on any particular issue, but based on what you know he is running into. Prof. Ginsberg it would only be a guess. Based on his cabinet appointments, he obviously plans to take on the bureaucracy, to change the way washington does business, to sharply reduce the quantity of regulation that agencies are able to produce, perhaps cut back on existing regulation. Host can he accomplish that . And can these businessmen, mostly men, they are used to saying i want this to happen, and it happens. Prof. Ginsberg its going to be very hard. I think for them to succeed, one thing that has to happen is that Civil Service rules have to be changed so that Civil Service employees can be disciplined and fired. Under the present rules, they just hunker down and refuse to do what a radical government is asking them to do. So i think one thing he will have to do if he is serious is to try get congress to rewrite Civil Service rules. Host who is responsible for the Civil Service rules being what they are today more than anyone . Prof. Ginsberg it wasnt the person, it was a political movement, the Progressive Movement in the late 19th century. The progressives wanted to destroy Political Parties. The progressives were an elite group, uppermiddleclass professionals, and they saw Political Parties as strengthening immigrants, the irish, the jews and italians, they used parties to rise to power. The progressives who were native stock americans wanted to weaken parties. One way to weaken parties was to eliminate the patronage machines that parties depended on to control elections, so to them, Civil Service, preventing the parties from hiring and firing government employees, was a way of destroying the Political Parties, and it was pretty successful. I think the parties the idea of too much party power is gone. I think it is time to readdress Civil Service. Civil service as it stands has outlived it usefulness. Host besides thsi book, which of your books was the most popular . Prof. Ginsberg fall of the faculty, which explains how administrators have taken over and wrecked the university. Host what is your next book about . Prof. Ginsberg i will tell you, but you will think it weird. I am writing a book on time travel. Im doing it with my colleague. We are showing, using surveys, the ways in which competing Political Forces rewrite history, imagine the future and try to use the past and future to control the present. So i say it is a book about time travel. Host the results of the survey are in this book we have been talking about. And the name of this book is what washington gets wrong the unelected officials who actually run the government and their misconceptions about the American People, with jennifer bachner, the coauthor, and our guest has been professor Benjamin Ginsberg from Johns Hopkins university. Thank you so much. Prof. Ginsberg delighted. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast on cspan. Org. Next sunday on q a, congresswoman jacky spear of california talks about her memoir, undaunted surviving jonestown, summoning encourage, and fighting back. Thats q a next sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific on cspan. President ials leadership surveys, Woodrow Wilson drops, and bill clinton rises from 21 to 15. Where does your favorite president rank . Learn that and more about the ines of leadership skills cspans the president s. Its great reading available wherever books are sold. Watch cspan today for Memorial Services honoring the Late Supreme Court Justice John Paul stevens. Eastern, his casket arrives at the Supreme Court were a private ceremony will take place in the great hall. At 10 30, he will lying in repose and the public is invited to pay their respects. Onch live Coverage Today cspan. Org, or listen with the cspan radio app. Next, itsp washington journal paired are guests include noah bierman of the Los Angeles Times and Siobhan Hughes of the wall street