Strategic Management in Government

I've spent most of this week on the road and away from my usual dose of C-SPAN and talk radio. Despite this lower level of attention, there hasn't been anything that's struck me to hop on the keyboard and write something up thus far this week. So, tonight, I want to write a little about my developing political theory. I'd like to use this blog, comments by readers, contributions by other authors, and research to fuel my thought process in this development. Perhaps a long manifesto of sorts will evolve someday.

At this point, I still find the U.S. Constitution to be a brilliant document. The system of government and laws therein have a delicate composition that exemplify the balance between the States and the federal government, the branches of the federal government with delegated powers and checks and balances, and the rights of liberty to free people. Notwithstanding the foregoing, there were arguably flaws in the original design such as counting slaves as 3/5 of a person, but the process to amend the document were prescribed and fair. Now, I'm a hardliner in terms of interpretation, but that's not the point of this little essay tonight. So, I'd like to skip ahead to what I believe may be a critical gap in the design.

There is a large body of work in literature and research in the field of strategic management. This is evidenced by the length (I haven't read the whole thing) of the Wikipedia entry on this subject. Why? It's about making money! Executives, capitalists, "big business"... they all like to make lots of money, right? So, that drives a lot of research and literature. No surprise. But, to me, it's more than making money. It's about doing the job right. I'm also a big believer in the free market. The more free and pure the market (read: no monopolies, worker's rights, lack of government interference, and unbridled capitalism... NO! these things don't contradict each other) the better! In a free market, the corporation and the individual are both out to make things better for themselves. Now, I'm not here to write about economic theory either tonight, so what's my point?

My point is this: shouldn't we expect the government to be run like we'd expect a business to be run? The answer is yes. I think of strategic management as the tools and processes used to effectively reach objectives. I think this is a critical gap in government today. In fact, the biggest problem is that the objectives are not consistent with the stewardship outlined in the Constitution. Our elected leaders today seem to have one simple objective: get re-elected; or in the case of an elected official not seeking re-election: make sure your legacy is protected and your fellow party members get elected. Now, with these objectives in mind, our politicians certainly employ tactics of strategic management. They hire campaign staff, political advisers, spin doctors, and all other sorts of handlers and supporters to ensure success in re-election. Scott McClellan spoke about the permanent campaign that exists in Washington today. Sadly, I don't blame them. We do not hold our politicians to be accountable for anything but re-election.

This is the topic that I want to explore more in future discussion. It begins with the role of government and defining the success criteria for the objectives of the government. This can be aligned to constitutional principles leading to a set of metrics by which we should hold our elected officials accountable. There's a lot of talk today about the economy, the war in Iraq, unemployment, health care coverage, and a multitude of other measurements... are these the right things to be looking at? Who should be responsible for what? They really only care about one thing today. Everything else is illusory and used to trick us into voting for them.