Geo11 :

Our State Dept. needs a serious shakeup. Condi is not getting the job done and is being undermined by some of her staff.

Agreed. But trying to reform the State Department seems to me to be particularly and uniquely difficult.

How do you do it?

It’s not like the UN, or even teachers’ unions, where you might be able to construct competing organizations. And you couldn’t just sack everyone at State and start over, though I sometimes fantasize about that . . ..

Every large organization overflows with individuals who have their own opinions, biases and agendas and each person will make decisions colored by his own interests.

And superimposed on that will be an institutional impetus to seek power for itself and protect the prerogatives it has already won.

The fact that no Secretary of State has been able to reform the State Department in any meaningful way tells me more about the nature of large organizations than the shortcomings of its bosses.

About the only thing can be done is to try to force change by exposing incompetence, bias, corruption and malfeasance to the public eye, and hope that enough pressure can be brought to effect change, somehow, some way.

Which is why the writings of Mr. Bolton and Ms Rosett are so vital.

Brian