Is the federal government inept? Walter Williams says yes. Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s ill-conceived cutbacks, reliable policy advice is no longer available to the president. The result has been the S&L bailout, the HUD scandal - mismanagement on an unprecedented scale. In this book Willims aims to show how Reagan, the first truly anti-analytic president, decimated the ranks of policy analysts and special information experts in the name of trimming back big government. Williams sets the stage and provides programme notes that explain both the crucial role of advisors and policy analysts in presidential policy making and where the system has gone wrong.
Governments succeed or fail on information, analysis, and advice , Williams writes,
but the system that provides our information analysis has been gutted . In
Mismanaging America
he not only reveals the linkage between the US ailing policy process and the anaemic, inept government that created the S&L and HUD scandals, but proposes urgently needed reforms to fight America’s decline.