Washington Post opinion writer: ‘The U.S. government is designed for failure. And, a new study shows, it’s getting worse’

Photo: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP

The epitome of wasteful red tape and shameless corruption. On both sides, the modern U.S. Senate are grandstanding a**hats preventing anyone - including the president - from getting anything done. Frankly, the system just doesn’t work anymore. Fred Hiatt -

When President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he needed Senate approval for 779 of his appointments.

That was a highly irrational way to run a government.

Sixty years later, despite efforts at reform and widespread recognition of the irrationality, President Biden needs Senate approval for 1,237 positions — an increase of 59 percent, as a new report from the Partnership for Public Service discloses.

We’ve gone from irrational to just plain crazy.

How crazy? The Post and the Partnership are tracking 799 of those positions (leaving out some advisory boards and less essential jobs). As of this week, only 112 of them have been filled.

More than six months into his presidency, in other words — more than an eighth of the way through his term — Biden hardly has the beginning of an executive team in place.

Recently, a visiting diplomat told me he was struck by the disconnect between Biden’s ambitious rhetoric — about rebuilding alliances, promoting democracy, standing up to China — and his meager agenda. “Where are the policies?” he asked.

This isn’t entirely fair; there are policies. But it’s difficult to put meat on the bones of any agenda without ambassadors, assistant secretaries of state and defense for different regions in the world, and more.

At about this point of every administration, you start to see stories assigning blame for the empty offices. Republicans will ask why Biden has nominated only 323 of the 799. Administration officials would say there’s not much point in stacking up another few hundred nominees for obstructionists such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who has been holding up State Department nominees to grandstand his opposition to the administration’s stance on a Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline.

But the better question is, why do things this way in the first place? (Read more)

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