I'm not sure why people have a hard time grasping this concept, when they grasp the concept of representative democracy (Where you vote for new legislature, or for supreme court appointments, or for executive actions, via proxy of voting for a representative of congress, or a president.)
I can only assume that it's a defense mechanism, where you can blame the boogieman of the deep state when the candidate you voted for does not deliver us to a land of milk and honey, and turns out to be an all-around shitty human being.
It doesn't matter which party they vote for as much of the day to day lives of citizens is determined by people who never stood for election, and barely answer to someone who did.
Abdication is letting lobbyists and "model legislation" outfits author the laws which legislators have been known to almost literally just rubber stamp.
[1] Just to pick on one representative, because I'm familiar with him, this guy has no college degree past an AA, and his career experience is running a restaurant and real estate development. I would hope he'd delegate running the country to someone more experienced than himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meadows_(North_Carolina_p...
I wouldn't automatically discount the value that a restauranteur or real estate developer could bring to office. At least it would bring a bit of diversity of opinion compared to the roomful of lawyers. Though in this case, we're experiencing the opposite problem: people who have absolutely no idea how legislation is done or how the government functions, and who cannot be convinced that they're not experts in every domain they touch.
It would be nice if people came to DC with the intent of listening, discussing, and coming to conclusions together. But the system is adversarial by design, and grows more adversarial with each passing year.
That's like calling the Executive Branch one person (currently filled by someone with extremely little expertise).
Congress includes bureaucratic organizations staffed by career experts like the Government Accountability Office. They used to have the Office of Technology Assessment until it was killed off by ideologues. They also enjoy ready access to experts from the various agencies.
> Of course Congress has to delegate to executive agencies. This is not abdication.
They've very clearly abdicated their responsibilities to the Executive in things like war powers and surveillance oversight. They are supposed to serve as a co-equal branch of government and as a check on Executive power.
“Deep State” nonsense is a trope that is just plain dumb. Brought to you by the same people who cry and whine about judicial activism and appoint people specifically to change the law.
> and barely answer to someone who did.
Their hiring is done by elected officials. Their employment and power, aside from a few positions, which are fixed-term, is contingent on the whims of those elected officials.
Just because Congress has been very busy with abdicating all responsibility for governing the country to the executive (Works great when Obama's in charge, because you can blame him for the milk going sour, works great when Trump's in charge, because he can take all the bad PR), doesn't mean that the bureaucrats don't answer to anyone.
No, hiring is largely done by other civil service personnel. The Secretary of State isn't deciding who works in the cafeteria - there's a number of tiers of career employees between him and that decision.
This is true for political appointees - ambassadors, Cabinet secretaries, etc. - but much less so for the civil service, where folks like State Department diplomatic staff or FBI agents tend to serve multi-decade careers under many different administrations.
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/27/17786324/trump-fires-governmen...
> The reason he can’t is simple: Unlike his employees at the Trump Organization, about a third of federal workers belong to unions. And those unions have negotiated certain job protections for workers, which includes a process that gives workers a chance to improve their job performance before they are terminated.
