Beyond concrete policy initiatives like these, the Biden administration has used its public platform to rebuild popular esteem for our administrative state. Its policy documents often include rich discussions about the regulatory system’s value for our democracy. And in contrast to DeSantis’s throat-slitting rhetoric, Biden’s OMB director, Shalanda Young, has been regularly updating a Twitter thread celebrating individual public servants and their contributions.
Importantly, a strengthened and publicly accountable administrative state such as the one the Biden administration is working to build doesn’t just uplift American democracy more broadly; it also serves as a crucial bulwark against future threats of democratic backsliding. We’ve already seen the invaluable role the professional bureaucracy played in preventing some of the Trump administration’s worst abuses of office. Indeed, it appears the success of our public servants—or what conservatives derisively refer to as the “deep state”—in thwarting many of Trump’s authoritarian ambitions is what is driving the right’s current campaign not just to deconstruct the administrative state but to retrofit it into some perverse version of itself, the better to pursue its illiberal goals.
With so much already riding on the outcome of next year’s presidential election, singling out the significance of the administrative state may seem bizarre and perhaps even a little absurd. Yet it may go a long way toward determining whether the American project of government “by the people” endures or perishes from the earth.