Much has been said in our time about government — little of it laudatory. In his first inaugural on Jan. 20, 1981, President Reagan famously declared: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” That set the tone for today’s Tea Partyers who regularly castigate government, and government regulators, as somehow evil, the enemy of democracy.
But Luther Gulick had a different take that he aired nearly 80 years ago in the foreword to a comprehensive study, presented by his renowned Institute of Public Administration, of a landmark issue of his age. The title: “After Repeal.” The widely hailed end of national Prohibition created nightmarish regulatory problems (as did Prohibition itself). What different kinds of alcohol could be sold? Where? When? And by whom?
Seven of the then 48 states decided to continue to prohibit alcohol, although five of these exempted beer as non-intoxicating; 12 states okayed liquor but only in homes; the remaining 29 and the District of Columbia approved the sale of beer, wine and spirits by the glass. But some of these forbade the sale of drinks without food, or issued other restrictions.
This is the thicket that Gulick and his two co-authors, Leonard V. Harrison and Elizabeth Laine, braved with their two-year study issued in 1936. They were not concerned with alcohol per se. What the regulations should be were matters of social policy, up to the voters and their representatives.
Ahh, but the administration of alcohol control — that was an issue “particularly rich in lessons for the administrator,” Gulick wrote.
And then he said this — perhaps the most cogent argument for government we have ever read:
I think you should send this to Grover Norquist, who famously said, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
It’s too bad we don’t have a Gulick to go head-to-head with today’s Norquist’s, Boehner’s and McConnell’s of the world.
Yes, I was thinking of Norquist’s quote as I wrote this. To drown government, you’d have to drown all America, as Gulick was saying.
Beautifully put. And how interesting that Gulick doesn’t mention the military, the only part of government that the Republicans actually care about.
Ahh, interesting observation, Steve. Remember, though, that in 1936 the US was still woefully unprepared for war and Gulick (who would play a major part in ramping up defense preparedness and military production in the years to come) may not at the time have been thinking much about soldiers.