[intense_dropcap font_color="primary"]M [/intense_dropcap]y first face-to-face encounter with the federal bureaucracy came on January 22, 2001. I was the deputy director of a “parachute team” for incoming president George W. Bush, and our job was to “secure the beachhead” at the Department of Labor on the first day of the new administration. (The political realm loves to borrow military metaphors.) That meant stopping the department from issuing guidance, rules, and statements that reflected the views of the departing Clinton administration. The most important tactical objective in this mission, we were told, was this: Secure the fax machine! (It was 2001, after all.) At that time, there was one specially designated fax machine used to send new regulatory language to the Federal Register, which publishes all newly minted regulations. There was a bureaucrat I’ll call Mitchell Sykes whose job it was to man that fax machine. We were to find Sykes and stop him from doing anything.¹

We were barely in the door when the cultural differences between the federal bureaucracy and the rest of America became apparent. We arrived at 8 a.m. The vast majority of career officials, we learned, did not arrive at 8 a.m. So we had trouble finding Mitchell Sykes. We began asking around and were met with shrugs and unknowing looks. The director of the parachute team began to grow agitated. His face reddened, his voice rose, and he slammed the table once or twice. Finally, well after 10, more than two hours after we had first arrived, we were told that Mitchell Sykes was outside our office. With great anticipation, we looked to the door to catch our first glimpse of the all-powerful bureaucratic potentate, the man who controlled the entire Federal Register for the $12 billion, 17,000-strong behemoth called the Department of Labor. And in walked…a nebbish. Balding, bespectacled, with J.C. Penney slacks hiked up above his waist. In a somewhat high-pitched voice, he introduced himself: “Hi, I’m Mitchell.”