Quotes about Bureaucratic Politics

Alphonso Jackson

When I came here I thought I worked for the President. But I didn’t realize that I also worked for 534 other people at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue who all think that they are presidents.

The 534 he referred to were the Members of Congress.

Allen Dulles

There is, of course, always the possibility, that two such powerful and well--financed agencies as CIA and DIA will become rivals and competitors.

Aaron L. Friedberg

As it is so often the case in Washington, key players protect their turf. Strong national security advisors have jealously guarded their role as the President’s chief strategist. Weak ones have failed to compel cooperation from the other agencies determined to go it alone.

Vali Nasr

Turf battles area a staple of every administration

Robert Harris

I used to love politics. I can't say I do any more. All the fun has gone out of it. Each side is engaged in this trench warfare of managerialism. They're all too scared to say anything that might make them appear something other than completely bland.

Richard Holbrooke

Each agency has … acquired certain “pet projects” which its senior officials promote. These are often carried out by despite concern and even opposition by mid-level officials of other agencies as part of a tacit trade off: “We’ll let you do your thing if you let us do ours. Such deals … are almost never explicit, but are nonetheless well understood by the participants.

In some areas the agencies even agree never to question or fight appropriation requests of the other and the President, Office of Management and Budget, and Congress is often presented with huge appropriations requests that other agencies never seem to have an criticism of. The Armed Services are notorious here. The Army will never criticize a new weapons system the Navy or Air Force wants nor will the Army ever argue that they could produce more with a different idea of their own. In return, the Army is never challenged by the other services in return just as Holbrook describes. In a sense, this has taken most of the competition for good ideas and the spending of public money out of the system and gives a modest amount to all regardless of need, worth, and public payoff.

Elliott Abrams

No particular prior experience—not business or academia, or think tanks, or law—suggests that an individual will master the bureaucratic politics of Washington DC.

Marjorie Scardino

The politics of Europe is unimaginative and bureaucratic.

Richard Holbrooke

Every other agency involved in foreign affairs jealously guards its prerogatives whenever State makes the slightest movement to broaden its role.

LeVar Burton

We can't afford to sacrifice another generation of American children to bureaucratic politics. We've got to get it done. The future, the health, the life - our nation depends on it and it's just foolish to think or act otherwise.

Henry A. Kissinger

One of the hardest things for the president is to distinguish the routine issues that come through from the essential issues that affect the long term, and not to let himself get sucked into the battles of the bureaucracy for marginal issues, and to keep them focused and to keep his mind clear on what the fundamental things are that he has to accomplish.

Bureaucratic Politics Quotes