Letters

"What's Next" (January) is another story in a series of articles that moan about how hard it is to do anything in Washington (or internationally) anymore.

I am tired of the view that this country is unable to deal with complex domestic or foreign issues. Rather than saying the country is "the world's only superpower, but unable to act alone," the key word should be "unwilling." In terms of foreign policy, the establishment and the Clinton administration refused to consider the concept of national sovereignty as being valid.

In the last 30 years, governing classes around the world have refused to act either independently on the domestic front or unilaterally outside their borders. They prefer to keep their privileges and wait for someone else (NGOs, the United Nations or whoever) to solve the problem. Your point in the same article about FEMA has another side. James Lee Witt worked assiduously to expand FEMA's role, indeed. The definition of disaster became much more fluid and broad allowing even more dependence on the federal government as evident in such measures as insuring homes and businesses in areas where they should never have been built.

Ad-hocracy reached its heights in the Clinton years because the President knew his ideas could not survive in the public arena-or in elections. The majority of citizens would never agree with him. Remember, Clinton never got a majority of the vote. As a consequence, he used recess appointments, executive orders and international agreements whenever he could.

The problems facing this country would be solvable if we emulated the forebearers who built it into the only superpower in the world, instead of whining about how difficult it is to be Americans.

John R. Primm
Senior Producer
Air Force Television
The Pentagon

On a Silver Platter

I think Virginia Thomas is dreaming if she expects President Bush to continue former Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review or Government and Performance Results Act initiatives ("Memo to the President," January). This would be handing a key issue on a silver platter to Gore for the next election campaign. I can just hear Gore saying, "Now that the current administration has tried and failed to implement my initiatives, it's time for me to take back the reins for reinventing government."

We may see the same idea in different form, but I doubt we'll see GPRA used by that name as "a sales tool" in the Bush administration.
Susan C. Roller

Training Program Specialist
Defense Finance and
Accounting Service
Government's Disgrace

So, Barry White thinks agencies aren't making "full use" of the Government Performance and Results Act (Viewpoint, January).

Closer to home, what about the 1990 Pay Comparability Act? The shameful gap between federal salaries and those in the private sector is still about 25 percent because the law has been totally ignored. I suspect that many federal employees would like to see the executive and legislative branches of our government start to make "full use" of the this law.

Ed Prior
Aerospace Technologist
NASA