Chiefs, Chiefs Everywhere

In Al Kamen's column in the Washington Post today, Paul Light is back with more dire news about the over-layering of the federal bureaucracy. The latest issue? The proliferation of chiefs of staff at agencies. There weren't any until 1981, Light says, when Health and Human Services Secretary Richard Schweiker created one to help him cut through bureaucracy at the department. Then the position "quickly metastasized," Kamen writes, until now every Cabinet member has one. That doesn't strike me as being that big a deal, if such folks are actually effective at helping Cabinet secretaries work better -- and if they're people who would've been hired as "senior advisers" or somesuch anyway. But Light argues that the staff chiefs under the Bush administration are less bureaucracy busters than political animals, with "at least a dotted line to Karl Rove."