In 1933 and 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress managed to enact and put into operation several programs designed to alleviate the effects of what would be known as the Great Depression. Agencies such as the AAA, WPA, and the CCC were designed, debated and passed during a span of little over a year.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the unanimous Supreme Court decision ending segregation in public schools was announced in May of 1954. Implementing this was to be done “with all deliberate speed”. It worked. Where I lived, in north central Missouri, a place called “Little Dixie” because of its resemblance to the culture and politics of the deep South, the local schools were desegregated by September of that year. With all the logistics needed, the transportation, finding space for extra students and hiring more teachers, the job was done.
New York City’s Empire State Building was built in just 410 days, March 17, 1930 when construction began and to May 1, 1931, when the opening ceremony was held. It took two months to clear the ground for the building, but this grand structure still stands proudly in the Big Apple.
These three examples show what can be done in a short amount of time when the task before them are important. Building a now iconic skyscraper, righting the wrongs of segregation and tackling the ravages of the economic devastation of the 1930s brought out the best in the American spirit of doing the hard jobs expeditiously.
Our nation’s elite law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began investigating the alleged Russian influence into the 2016 Presidential election in July 2016 — and it still isn’t finished? Nineteen months, and there is no end in sight to this saga. Robert Mueller, the special counsel also looking into the accusation of collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians has been on the job since May of 2017. He has the advantage of talented lawyers and the FBI for his work, yet we know not when he will be finished and give his conclusions.
When contrasted with the speed with which earlier Americans got important work done, we can reasonably ask the question — is this lack of apparent progress deliberate?
President Donald Trump was duly elected to his office on November 8, 2016. This was opposed by many who had an almost visceral hatred for the man. Since that day, there has been an onslaught of criticism and an ongoing movement called #Resist.
President Trump is often referred to as “the most powerful man in the world”, and as such has a job that is all-consuming. With daily attacks on his character, a Democratic party that opposes all of his policies, every day with the uncertainty of the Russian allegations hanging over his and his administration harms the efficient working of the government. Leaks from supposedly confidential documents and meetings continue to plague the nation’s capital.
That is not the only problem with slow-walking in Washington, D. C. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate are conducting their own investigations into allegations of wrongdoing on the part of officials and institutions in the government. But several of these committees doing these investigations have been, at times, stonewalled by the very people and institutions over which the Constitution gives Congress the legal oversight of their actions. In one infamous case, only after Freedom of Information Act requests and repeated requests for documents and testimony, the FBI finally surrendered the material needed — but only under the real threat of subpoenas and legal penalties for the leadership of the Bureau. Months had transpired, slowing down the release of information the American people have a right to know.
And, it seems, in light of recent revelations by both House and Senate committees that some underhanded dealings by the FBI and the DOJ had occurred. In addition, members of the previous administration were implicated in some of these events.
What should we do about this “slow walking” by these officials who are paid by us? My solution would be very simple. Since both the FBI and Department of Justice are in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, the head of that branch should order both to quit the stalling and cooperative, under penalty of quick removal from their jobs. That person is quite skilled in telling underperforming individuals, “You’re fired”!
And the person who “oversees” the Russian investigation by Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, should demand that Mueller end his work, since Mueller has gone beyond his limited mission to look into the alleged Russian collusion into the 2016 Presidential election.
Those with the power to speed up the processes should do their jobs, and those of us who are wanting to know the results would applaud them.
Or, are we to simply admit that in the 21st century, our leaders are not capable of moving as quickly as they did in the old days?