“From “Why Won’t Emily Murphy Just Do Her Job?” published in The Atlantic Magazine.
In delaying the transition, the General Services Administration chief is acting like an ideologue.
GUEST SHARE / By Anne Applebaum, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine--I don’t know for certain that Emily Murphy gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror and says to herself, “You are a good person.”
But I am willing to bet that she does. Most people in her position—most people who are undermining the rules of their group, destroying their institution, harming their society—are doing so because they have become convinced that they are good people, virtuous people, brave people, dedicated people.
Nothing suggests that Murphy is an exception.
Murphy is the head of the General Services Administration, the unglamorous bit of the federal government that actually runs the federal government. Part of her job—a part that no one has ever before considered controversial or even noteworthy—is to “ascertain” who has won the U.S. presidential election, and then to release the congressionally mandated funds that allow the winner to begin his transition.
Usually, that process also unlocks cooperation between incoming and outgoing officials. Before leaving office in 2017, aides to Barack Obama had prepared elaborate explanations of the state of the world, including a 69-page playbook for how to manage a pandemic. They handed the documents over to Donald Trump’s transition team, which ignored them.
For the complete article in The Atlantic: click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment