Personnel is policy.
Those are the insightful words of former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the great bureaucratic operators of modern American history.
His point was that the chief executive can direct his or her agencies to undertake this or that policy, but the bureaucracy will often resist change — both because it has its own priorities and because of plain old government inertia.
Unless you put your people inside that bureaucracy. When Cheney's foreign policy rival Colin Powell became secretary of state, Cheney made sure John Bolton had a top job at State to push Cheney's agenda, as Dexter Filkins reported in a recent profile of Bolton.
The "personnel is policy" Cheney-ism came to mind last week when I learned that Josh Syrjamaki was named chief of staff at the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
When Gov. Tim Walz left Congress after his election last year, Syrjamaki was his chief of staff, which means he's a trusted Walz hand. Syrjamaki is an alumnus of the office of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.
It's not surprising that Walz would put one of his closest advisers inside the Department of Corrections.
We don't know exactly what Walz wants out of the state's prisons, but he's been hinting at major change since before his inauguration.
