Kolkata            Watching the efforts to dismantle the federal government agency by agency is pretty amazing.  The fact that some are starting to push back on unilateral orders by co-president Elon Musk, is encouraging, but not yet reassuring.  Some are going one way as the Office of Personnel Management makes some orders “voluntary,” rather than Muskgatory, and the President simultaneously says something different.  Who’s on first, what’s on second!

All of these heads rolling reminds me of a former colleague and long-time friend’s maxim for government service:  if you are going to survive as a bureaucrat, you have to have a base.

Thomas P. Glynn, III, worked with me at Massachusetts Welfare Rights Organization, the largest affiliate of the National Welfare Rights Organization, when I was head organizer there in the late 1960’s before leaving to found ACORN in 1970.  Tom had been a VISTA volunteer, which was true of the largest percentage of the MWRO staff in those days.  His portfolio was different.  He had organized a “friends” group which supported MWRO in various ways from fundraising to leveraging media and political support and protection for our demands.  Tom innately understood that one had to translate our actions from the recipient base through a crucible that converted the street work into political influence and power elsewhere.  None of that is to say that in those perilous (and continuing) anti-welfare recipient times that we won all of the demands, even after early success, as the sentiment from Reagan on down moved aggressively to target our constituency, but that’s a different story.

While some few of us saw the lessons of that time one way and doubled-down, Tom saw them another and thought he could have more impact in government than outside.  He got a PhD at Brandies in public policy and administration.  His career has now seen him as deputy secretary of the Department of Labor under Secretary Robert Reich during Clinton’s first term to a host of positions in city government in Boston from running the MTA to the Airport and related functions, as well as a key operations person at Partners, the huge nonprofit hospital chain based in the city.  He was always a behind-the-scenes player with a network of political connections and a peerless reputation as someone who could fix and run things.  All of which seems to be proof of his maxim, that you maintain a base to survive and thrive in government.

These days in Washington, it seems this is a lesson unlearned by too many.  The new team thinks the only base they need is a patron, like Musk or Trump.  Perhaps that’s enough to get the job, but I’m sure a governmental expert, like Tom, would quickly point out that it’s not enough to keep the job.  Many of the beleaguered agency heads at USAID, EPA, Education, FEMA, and other targeted agencies and departments have known they were in the crosshairs of conservatives for years now, but seem not to have understood the maxim and secured their perimeters and built constituency and political bases sufficient to protect their operations sustainably.  This is a problem with short-term political appointees, rather than the entrenched bureaucratic managers like Tom, who take the long view, not the main chance.

It’s no surprise that the CIA and some of the defense apparatuses were the first resisters.  Even given the current weak-kneed Senate and compliant House, people in the security state still had vast constituencies in Congress and at large to pushback.  Veterans, social security and Medicare recipients, are still extensive sources of support against some of the current outrages.  Even the Trump II team knew better than to stop their payments in the early deep freeze.

Watching the evisceration of so many federal outposts, it’s too late for them to tattoo Tom’s rule on their forearms as a reminder, but once the dust clears for those who come in the future, it’s a lesson worth never forgetting again.