Process Wonkery

When it comes to the decisions our leaders make I often stress the importance of "process." This is not surprising given that my entire professional career has been, essentially, a series of process improvement projects. I tend to focus, perhaps too much, on the idea that a well-executed process, conceived according to clear objectives will tend to engender good decisions and therefore good outcomes.

Whereas my natural tendency is to focus on process -- the "how do we get there" part of the equation -- the "outcome-focused person" would tend to focus on the "where there is" part of the equation. Clearly, a large part (maybe even the vast majority) of leadership must be focused on the "where" part of the equation. But my contention -- and a major reason why I fault Bush as a leader -- is that a leader must pay at least some attention to the "how" part of the equation.

In that vein, I think Bruce Reed's article on "wonks" versus "hacks" is a variation on my process mantra. Bruce Reed is a former advisor in the Clinton White House and therefore brings some inside experience to the discussion. As Reed describes it, wonks and hacks are like the yin and the yang of Washington.

In every administration, wonks and hacks fight it out. The measure of a great president is his ability to make sense of them both. A president must know the real problems on Americans' minds. For that he needs hacks. But ultimately, he needs policies that will actually solve those problems. For that he needs wonks.

Reed uses the wonk-hack lens to assess the Bush White House. Not surprisingly (he is the current president of the DLC afterall) Bush doesn't fare well in the analysis. What's interesting to me, however, is the extent to which Reed's wonk-hack dichotomy addresses what I've called Bush's utter disregard for process.

Reed reminds us of John DiIulio, a Bush administration insider, who said

There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything--and I mean everything--being run by the political arm.

He then runs through some examples (Medicare, steel tariffs) which highlight the hegemony of hackery in Bush's White House.

The Clinton White House, of course, was not without it's own hacks. The difference, Reed argues, is that all the Clinton hacks were counterbalanced by the Wonk-In-Chief.

Bush, on the otherhand, provides no such counter weight to the hacks that dominate his inner circle. It is therefore not surprising that Bush's poll-driven leadership lacks any discernible process.