All realistic study of government has to start with an understanding of bureaucracy . . . because no government can function without it.The popular antithesis between bureaucracy and democracy is an oratorical slogan, which endangers the future of democracy. For a constitutional system which cannot function effectively, which cannot act with dispatch and strength, cannot live.The central question [concerning bureaucracy is] how adaptation is to occur so that the public is served in a more efficacious way and that would-be reformers are not permitted to destroy an institution that remains central to the functioning of democracy. -Ezra Suleiman 2 Despite endless rantings to the contrary, American bureaucracy does work-in fact, it works quite well. -Charles T. Goodsell' President Obama has adopted the same approach to controlling the federal bureaucracy that his predecessors employed, dating back to the Reagan administration: the administrative presidency. The administrative presidency seeks to rein in bureaucratic discretion by centralizing decision-making in the White House and by sending vast numbers of political appointees into the agencies to monitor and control the bureaucrats. Beset by two wars and the Great Recession, it is not surprising that the President has chosen, at least so far, not to change this approach to agency oversight. But the choice is unfortunate. The capacity of the regulatory agencies has deteriorated over the years to the point that they are