Administrative Continuity Quotes

Some faces may change in the top-heavy, bloated bureaucracy of Washington and all the state governments, but the bureaucracy will remain intact.

Every President does it. It goes back to George Washington. I can’t say that past Administrations have asked the same questions, but the end result is the same—you put people on boards that you want.

Every president is a product of those who preceded him.

In every society the permanent government is more change averse than the changing government.

In all countries with a settled bureaucracy people used to say: The cabinets come and go, but the bureaus remain.

Malaysians, during the colonial period, were not given the top positions: we were always subordinate. Fortunately for us, the people who took over were mainly civil servants: people who were serving the Government.

The professional permanent staff that lies right beneath them will still be in place, making everything work until the [Donald] Trump appointees start populating the offices on top of them.

Creating these messes that go from administration to administration and then you swoop in and clean them up - with that heroic Delta force - people not realizing that they were always there but doing different things than what we see them doing at the moment.

Presidents may go to the seashore or to the mountains. Cabinet officers may go about the country explaining how fortunate the country is in having such an administration, but the machinery at Washington continues to operate under the army of faithful non-commissioned officers, and the great mass of governmental business is uninterrupted.

In the absence of full-fledged Congressional investigations, American policymakers rarely look back. They are bound by continuity and fealty across administrations and generations.

Historically, when a previous US administration enters into an agreement, it carries forward into the future administration.

He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them, has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality.