Transcript
WILLIAM GALSTON: Consider the moment that we're now in. Washington is abuzz with the classic transition chatter, who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out? What are the different considerations going to be in the selection of the cabinet, the subcabinet? How will the White House be organized? These are all very significant questions. But there are some broader questions as well and those questions are the principal subject of today's session.
You can boil these broader questions down to one; it's not the only one but I think it's the central one, and I'd formulate it this way: How do presidential appointments and the bureaucratic or institutional structures into which the appointees are asserted affect the performance of the federal government? Why that question? Why that focus? Answer: Given where we are right now, the relationship between presidential personnel and government performance matters an enormous amount, more than ever I would say.
. . .One of the things that political scientists know about trust and the generation of trust and the maintenance of trust is that the fact and also the perception of competence in government is a key determinant of trust. Even if government is honest and well intentioned, if it is incompetent, it will not be trusted. And you don't need to know a lot about the U.S. government or any government to know that competence is largely a function of the people who are chosen to staff the government. If you doubt the truth of that proposition, just cast your mind back 3 years to the government's response to the disaster that hit New Orleans in the form of Hurricane Katrina. The government's response to that - or nonresponse to that - contributed to a sharp downward lurch not only in support for the President and his administration but also in the trust that the American people were willing to invest in the federal government.
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