This morning, Fred Anderson described several assessments of the performance of federal regulatory agencies. He identified one as "pessimistic." That view held that federal agencies would always remain more responsive to money, economic and political power than to the "public interest." With some qualifications, I subscribe to that pessimistic view. My judgment, however, is tempered by sympathy for the plight of the bureaucrat at all levels of government. The problem, as I see it, is that the bureaucrat's constituency is unbalanced. The pressure brought to bear by well-defined, organized, and economically concentrated interests is significant and unrelenting. On the other hand, pressure from the "public interests"—those that are diffuse, long-range and often hard-to-quantify—is either not present or is inadequate.

This is not a new state of affairs. The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887. A mere five years later, in 1892, a Chicago lawyer, Richard Olney, who represented the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, had already perceived the situation. Just before leaving Chicago for Washington to become President Cleveland's Attorney General, Olney was urged by the Railroad to do what he could to abolish the ICC when he got to Washington. In a letter to his client he counseled it against this course.