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Thursday, April 24, 2003

By Paul C. Light ISBN 0-8157-0604-9 Brookings Institution Press 241 pp. Purchase This Book

In little over a year, President Bush managed to go from conceptualization of the Department of Homeland Security to congressional approval for the formation of one of the largest federal agencies in 50 years, a project that may be considered one of government's greatest endeavors -- one day.

DHS, however, did not make the deadline for Paul C. Light's "Government's Greatest Achievements: From Civil Rights to Homeland Security." Using a list of major legislation developed by political scientist David Mayhew as an anchor, Light was able to build a list of 540 major laws passed in the last 50 years (his cut-off point was Bush's inauguration). These laws were then classified and expounded upon under three terms:

• Endeavor: "Government's efforts to solve some problem," such as advancing human rights, ensuring safe food and water supplies, enhancing consumer protection or improving mass transportation. "The 50 endeavors reviewed... reflect [government's] most intensive efforts to improve life both at home and abroad; some of these were underway before 1945 and almost all continue today."
• Achievement: "Government progress in actually solving a problem." Rebuilding Europe after World War II, expanding the right to vote and promoting equal access to public accommodations fall under this category. The achievements were based on the opinions of 450 historians and political scientists who teach at U.S. colleges and universities, and were ranked on a mix of perspectives: its successfulness, its importance and its difficulty, resulting in a list of government's 25 greatest achievements.
• Priority: "Involves choices about how hard the government should work on an endeavor in the future." Improving air quality, increasing arms control and disarmament, and reducing disease are top-level endeavors that respondents thought government should continue in the next half-century. Those priorities were ranked by 550 historians, political scientists, sociologists and economists who teach in classrooms of higher education.

One of the most valuable components of the book is its appendixes. Each relate to the book's three divisions; the first provides details of legislation, laws and world events behind the top 50 endeavors; the second provides percentage breakdowns of the endeavor survey of academics, ranked by importance, difficulty and success; the third provides the survey results naming the 50 future endeavors by whether they should be continued or stopped, their importance, federal responsibility and what should have the priority.

Light, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, warns that readers should not see the term "greatest" to mean the "best, most successful or even most important. Rather, it refers to the problems that the federal government tried hardest to solve." A number of visible endeavors are absent from the discussion, such as peace in the Middle East and strengthening homeland defense. The former is excluded because the book is about laws, not executive actions or court decisions. As for the latter, only smaller-scale homeland security laws were on the books when Bush came into office.

That said, this book could cause government naysayers to think differently. Few problems are solved overnight, but Light's analysis is proof that progress can come from government, regardless of the party in control of Congress or the White House. --Deborah L. Acomb, NationalJournal.com

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