Dr. T. DOUGLAS REILLYI spent almost 3 years on a Change of Station at DOE in Washington, DC. While there I worked as much with the State Department and other agencies related to nonproliferation and arms control. I offer this as a reply to Mr. Mead’s excellent opinion piece in Thursday’s Los Alamos Daily Post (link).
While there I had several conversations and meals with a former LANL colleague who’d worked many years in government and was then the Chief Scientist-Deputy Director of the On Site Inspection Agency (OSIA). I remember well a conversation regarding the inertia of the federal bureacracy; this is the actual federal employees, not the political appointees who are at the head of the agencies.
He said, ‘Doug, the inertia of the bureaucracy is a very positive thing. It means that if a very bad man/woman is elected President and appoints an equally bad administration, he/she will have great difficulty getting his/her agenda instrumented. Of course, the same will happen if a very good person is elected.”
Mr. Mead, I thought of this when I read your article; I’m appalled by what is said and done these days in the Oval Office and its Administration. Mr. Trump will eventually leave office; it’s things like this that lead me to keep hope in our country.
