The Trump administration revealed two plans to “reform” the State Department in April: a White House plan that was leaked to the media, and a plan from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that came equipped with old and new org charts plus official explanations from Rubio himself.
I served at State for all eight years of the Reagan administration, departing on January 20, 1989, when the administration ended, and returned there almost exactly 30 years later — January 24, 2019, in the Trump administration. I found the place remarkably unchanged after that long passage of time. There were, happily, more women, more Hispanics, and more people of Indian or Pakistani heritage. But there were the same bureaucratic blockages, the same “never say yes” attitude from the Office of the Legal Adviser, the same cultures in the regional and functional bureaus, and the same redundancies and inefficiencies. One- or two-page documents still required an astonishing number of internal clearances, with a list of offices that had to be consulted, often adding real delays.
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