Presidents

THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH’S FUNCTION:

A Quiet Administrative Revolution: Changes in bureaucratic procedure are revolutionizing how the administrative state works—potentially reestablishing democratic control.(Donald Devine, 9/08/25, Law & Liberty)

The ruling provision of the OPM guidance directly states that “covered agencies and subdivisions are no longer subject to [certain] collective-bargaining requirements.” As a result, executive agencies no longer must engage in collective bargaining with federal unions. Consequently, the original recognition of the relevant unions no longer applies, and unions lose their status as exclusively recognized labor organizations requiring agency facilitation in collecting union dues.

Agencies are further arguably allowed to proceed with personnel policies generally, including reductions in force. Units covered by the memorandum include the departments of Defense, State, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Justice, and Homeland Security, and substantial parts of most other major federal agencies. All are directed “to return to the policies of Executive Order 13839” and are “accordingly required to, consistent with applicable law, return performance evaluations to 30 days, and administer discipline and unacceptable performance policies to those set in the first Trump administration and to separate employees for unacceptable performance in appropriate cases.” Union involvement in employee separations was invalidated, and government-paid union positions were eliminated.

A memorandum titled “Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives” revived performance management principles requiring actual plans from each top career senior executive to be evaluated by a political superior and reviewed by performance review boards managed by non-career executives. Failure to perform could lead to removal without an appeal to an administrative review. Similar procedures would again cover second-level career supervisors as in the original Carter legislation.

Together, these reforms change the nature of government administration. The union-related changes alone are fundamental. These weaken government unions and associations’ powers, agency fees, and costs, freeing willing career managers and executives to implement the decisions of presidentially appointed agency leaders. Even Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt opposed unionizing federal government employees.

“GREAT GOBLIN-BEAST”:

The Ghost Bear (Theodore Roosevelt, Forgotten Tales and Vanished Trails)

They were surprised to find that, during their short absence, something — apparently a bear — had visited camp and rummaged about among their things, scattering the contents of their packs and, in sheer wantonness, destroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were quite plain, but at first they paid no particular heed to them, busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, laying out their beds and stores, and lighting the fire.

While Bauman was making ready supper, it being already dark, his companion began to examine the tracks more closely, and soon took a brand from the fire to follow them up, where the intruder had walked along a game trail after leaving the camp. When the brand flickered out, he returned and took another, repeating his inspection of the footprints very closely. Coming back to the fire, he stood by it a minute or two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly remarked: “Bauman, that bear must have been walking on two legs.”

THE 40 YEAR EPOCH:

Jimmy Carter: The First Reaganite (John Phelan, 2/08/25, EconLib)

Despite claiming ignorance of the causes of or remedies for rising inflation, he acted as though he did grasp that inflation was, in the popular formulation, “too much money chasing too few goods.”

If that was the problem, one half of the solution lay on the supply side by increasing the number of goods on which the money could be spent. To this end, Carter deregulated the airline, trucking, rail, and telephony industries. “These actions,” Susan Dudley writes, “allowed new entrants into the markets, increased efficiency, lowered prices, offered consumers more choices, and likely contributed to declining inflation.”

The other half of the solution lay on the demand side by reducing the amount of money. Carter appointed Paul Volcker chair of the Federal Reserve in 1978. “We needed a new approach,” Volcker wrote, “Put simply, we would control the quantity of money (the money supply) rather than the price of money (interest rates).” As money growth fell, interest rates soared. The economy shrank in 1980, and unemployment hit 7.2% but inflation would fall from 13.5% to 3.2% in 1983. By then, Carter was out of office and Reagan was cruising to a landslide reelection due to an economic boom thanks, in some small part, to Carter’s deregulatory and sound money policies.

Historians will not differentiate the presidencies from 1976 to 2016.

GODSPEED:

Jimmy Carter’s Boyhood Fishing Memories (Jimmy Carter, December 29, 2024, Garden & Gun)

About once a year my daddy took me on a fishing trip to a more distant place, usually farther south in Georgia. We made a couple of such visits to the Okefenokee Swamp in the southeastern corner of our state, near the Florida line and not far from the Atlantic Ocean but cut off from the east coast by sand hills. The swamp is a shallow dish of six hundred square miles of water and thousands of islands, mostly of floating peat, on which thick stands of cypress and other trees grow. These peat islands are the “trembling earth” from which the area got its Indian name. Stained with tannin, the water has a reddish-brown color, but was considered by all the fishermen to be pure enough to drink.

We stayed at the only fish camp around the western edge of the swamp, owned by a man named Lem Griffis. His simple pine­board bunkhouses, with screens instead of windowpanes, could accommodate about twenty guests. As we sat around an open fire at night, Lem was always eager to regale us with wild tales about the biggest bear, the prettiest woman, or a catch of so many fish they had to haul in water to fill up the hole left in the lake. His stories were honed by repetition so that the buildup and punch line equaled those of any professional entertainer. We listened and laughed for hours even when we were hearing the same yarn for the second or third time. His regular guests would urge, “Tell us about the city lady who thought her son might drown.”

Lem would wait awhile until enough others joined in the request, and then describe in vivid and heart-rending tones the anguish of a mother who was afraid to let her only child near the swamp. “I finally said, ‘Ma’am, I can guarantee you the boy won’t drown. I’ve been here all my life and never heerd of anybody drowning in this here swamp.’ The lady was quite relieved. There was always a long pause, until Lem finally added, “The gators always get them first.”