Government and the Principles of Swamp Drainage

A worker hoses off a street in Washington DC in June, 2020. Photo by tedeytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

I’m no political scientist. Neither am I an expert in your swamps, your fens, your wetlands, etc but I am a guy with an old and occasionally very wet basement. Driving through a storm to arrive home only to find that water is flowing downhill at a depth of eighteen inches through your basement will drive any homeowner to serious thought on amateur water management. Being a minutiae-obsessed guy with an English degree will drive you to overthink the aptness of metaphors.

Sometimes the two roads intersect, viz., too few people appreciate the nonsense that is the “level playing field” so desirable in myriad aspects of our society. The reality is that a great many playing fields in use are intentionally constructed with a crown running its length.

The “drain the swamp” metaphor is more apt, if one assumes that the water signifies the corrupting combination of money and power and the desirability of draining the swamp aforesaid is to rid the area of the foul, corrupted creatures.

There are three methods of managing an excess of water. First, one may reduce the amount of water entering the system in question. Secondly, one may give the water somewhere to go outside of the system, assuming you can assure the outflow is greater than the inflow. Third, one may use the natural properties of the water to encourage it to gather to a lesser depth in the system in question.

Only one of these, the last, is remotely practicable.

The first, to turn metaphor to reality, would require a massive reduction in the size and scope of the federal government. To do so would starve the government of influence and thus remove, for the most part, the incentive to corrupt. Why would industry seek to sway actors whose decisions have no influence on your bottom line?

Any student of American history post-Black Monday, 1929 America can see what a forlorn hope that is.

The second—hoping that government will use the corrupting influence of money at a greater rate than those seeking to corrupt itself—is, if I may be my natural, cynical self, the gambit employed by politicians who promise swamp drainage.

And how has that worked out?

The third option is, admittedly, something of a Hail Mary. It’s what the cartoon characters would mutter incoherently to each other before one would declare that it was a plan “so crazy that it just might work.”

May I return to non-metaphorical water management for a moment?

The solution to that eighteen inch flow of water through my basement was two fold. Firstly, I should avoid so-called once every century rain storms. Secondly, I should dig my sump hole deeper.

I managed the first, but not as well as you might think.

That said, for those without basement drainage issues, or even basements — I’m looking at you, Alamo — I should explain the second solution.

Imagine a floor, a straight line, with a wavy line for our purposes below and parallel—and uncomfortably close—to the floor. The floor is, well, your floor. The wavy line is the water table underground. Given enough rain, the water level will rise sufficiently to bring the water table above the level of the floor.

One solution to this problem is the sump pump. You dig a hole below the level of the floor and sink a pump into it. When water reaches the level of the pump, the pump is activated and the hole is drained, sending the water to some innocuous area, effectively diverting and distributing some of the water, not allowing it to concentrate in the problem area, your basement.

So how do we apply a metaphorical sump pump to the metaphorical swamp that is Washington, D.C.? By distributing the corrupting influence of money and power over a larger area.

Would it not be manifestly better, in the current age, to have the Department of Agriculture based somewhere in the Corn Belt?

I confess, even without the swamp drawing effects I think it would be a far better thing for bureaucrats to rub shoulders with the very people their dictates impact most directly.

Should the Department of Indian Affairs be located in Washington or the Desert Southwest? I would argue the latter.

State, Defense? Washington, surely.

The Department of Labor should be found in a place with far more industry than Washington.

The Department of Energy should be found in a place where energy is produced or processed.

The Department of Veterans Affairs should be found low on a waiting list, frustrated and feeling betrayed.

Perhaps the Department of Health and Human Services should be found in some biotech corridor.

The FBI should probably be housed in Chicago and the DEA in Mexico City—I’m mostly kidding on the latter, though I have long shot policy on America’s drug and immigration problems that could draw it closer to reality—but the general idea of spreading the various parts of the executive branch around the country to be in the neighborhood of the people most impacted by their function would seem to me to be a reasonable way to both perform that function and decentralize the potentially corrupting influence of money and power away from Washington. It would also reduce the chasm between the governing and the governed in ways that would be mutually beneficial to both.

My penchant for absurdity aside, I submit to you the reader that this is a far, far better distribution of the Federal Government than we currently have. Are the economic impacts of moving these departments out of the suburban Washington area recovered by those which might be realized by the areas they would find themselves in?

I’d like to think so, but I’m no economist.

I welcome any and all feedback on this idea, which I admit is only theoretically practicable.

We are in contentious times.