Washington’s Dirty Little Secret: No One Is Running the Show

One of the hardest lessons for young, idealistic, and educated people to learn when they come to Washington — and some never learn it — is that nobody is running things. Sure, they know how to hold a press conference or write a law or conduct a study. But no person or group of people has the power to impose their will on society. There are just too many chefs making the soup.

In other words, people have the power to try stuff in the same way generals have the authority to send troops into battle, but as General James Mattis likes to say, “The enemy gets a vote.” And in politics and public policy, the enemy isn’t merely the opposing party or hostile voters, but life — that vast realm of existence governed as much by Murphy’s Law as by Washington’s laws. Facts are stubborn things. The world is complicated.