Deep State

The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Mike Lofgren, 277 pages

According to former congressional staffer Lofgren, the elected government of the US is only the visible tip of the proverbial iceberg - the bulk of which is invisible, unaccountable, and actually responsible for the direction of policy.  This "deep state" is made up of dense networks of lobbyists, consultants, contractors, bureaucrats, senior military officers, and lawmakers, all of whom move so easily between the public and private spheres that the boundary has effectively ceased to exist.  Far from moving into the much-feared era of the "imperial presidency", there has been a slide into a "ceremonial presidency", where a figurehead president acts as a lightning rod for controversy while real policy is made elsewhere.

It is expected that any book of this sort is going to be cynical - cynicism and its sibling, wounded idealism, are the former insider's stock in trade.  It is a fine line, however, between cynicism, with its claim to cold realism, and bitterness, which suggests the settling of personal scores.  Lofgren zigzags back and forth across that line through the book.  The book is further handicapped by its Beltway provincialism, which tends to regard everything as ultimately caused by action from Washington, and important only insofar as it affects Washington.  The limitations this imposes become clear when it comes time for Lofgren to offer some positive solutions to the systemic problems he has vaguely outlined, and all he can recommend is measures that would only strengthen the same system.