Just Finished Reading: The Fifth Risk – Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis (FP: 2018) [254pp] 

This was a bit of an odd one. I’d scheduled this one in as part of a short series of books about aspects of Democracy. From the subtitle and some of the comments on both the front and back cover I expected this to be a critique of the early days of the Trump administration and its now blatantly obvious attempts (however ineptly) to undermine American democracy. On reading it however, I found it to be very different.  

To be honest I still can’t decide exactly what this book was about. I can see the reason it was written. The author was clearly concerned about the chaotic first few months of the Trump Presidency. He outlines in graphic (and in other circumstances hilarious) detail how various government departments, who were well versed in managing transitions, waited (and waited, and waited) for transition teams to arrive to take up their new roles. When they not only failed to do so but actively rejected being contacted for clarification the panic set in. When new administrators did finally arrive the career civil servants were more often than not astonished at the disinterest displayed by their new ‘masters’ for the position they now held and the department they were now in charge of. Indeed, again more often than not, the new incumbents seemed singularly unsuited for their new roles and seemed far more interested in rooted out Obama appointed staff (or those who merely voted for him) than understanding the job requirements and present/future problems of the Department.  

Once this was done with the book then examined how various high/medium level staff had been ‘let go’ as no longer required despite years (or decades) of knowledge and experience – plus a fair few awards and international recognition for their work – without any attempt to fill gaps or engage in knowledge transfer. The new heads simply either did not care about such things or actively (at least it seemed to those involved) want to cause damage to the organisation for no good reason – even when the very real consequences were explained to them. All of the above may seem like I found this slim work disappointing in some fundamental way. Quite the opposite, in fact! Despite its misleading subtitle, I found this book difficult to put down. The author has a real talent of finding interesting people – in the Commerce Department and at NOAA in particular – and brining their vital (but often hidden) work to public attention. I’d definitely recommend this as an interesting read in general and especially if you’ve ever wondered what some of the US Departments actually did (generally *not* what you expect!)!  

One of the things I did find bizarre, although I was naturally aware of it after spending far too much time watching US TV excerpts on YouTube, was the idea of Department heads and hundreds of others being (generally) replaced with a new Administration. This seems to me to be counterproductive (although I can understand ‘why’ it happens). Here, in the UK, the Civil Service prides itself on being non-partisan and (generally again) Service heads are not replaced with each new government (as we’ve had multiple governments in the same year before now you can imagine what chaos that would cause!) much less the hundreds/thousands of lower posts. This means that people can accumulate decades of experience in a department which not only aids basic continuity but embeds some serious expertise throughout an organisation. Changing direction every 4-8 years and losing that built up experience/knowledge base can’t help but degrade the ability of any department to accomplish anything – especially anything that needs years in the planning and even longer in the execution.