Bureaucratic Hierarchy Quotes

Political ideologues like Abrams distrust and disrespect civil service officials. Abrams and his colleagues are most critical of the civil service’s alleged lack of loyalty to the President. However, he forgets and most people never realize that all Civil Servants when they take their oath of office pledge their loyalty to the Constitution and not to the President. Many of them criticize presidential, political party and ideological loyalists like Abrams because even Abrams and other Presidential appointments swear an oath to the Constitution and not the President or a political party.

Diem appointed his relatives and cronies to his cabinet and other key political positions, and allowed the legislature to meet infrequently thereby having his family control the country.

There are many factors that tend to make it very hard for Cabinit Secrretaries and other Presidencial appointments to control their agencies. They include inertia, the huge size of many agencies, existing laws, bureaucracies, and the techncial complexity of the work of the agency. Like a huge aircraft carrier, when they can make a change it takes a while for the change to occur and be noticable--typically more time than the average cabinet member is in office. This is much like CEOs of very large corporations.