Intended for teachers and older students: my review of Herbert Kaufman's book, Red Tape

Herbert Kaufman's Red Tape is a wise, lucid, thoughtful, and detached analysis of one of society's most frustrating, confusing, exasperating, and universally hated problems. The book's introduction notes that it was intended to fill a gap, "that there was no serious book on governmental Red Tape. Satires, laments, denunciations, yes. But no analytical treatment of where Red Tape comes from and what can and cannot be done about it."

Of what value is a brief (100 page) treatise on Red Tape? For one thing, it may bring instant relief to many readers who are often involved in red tape: naive eager beavers, impatient young Turks, wild-eyed crazies, wearied executives, exasperated educators, frustrated reformers, irritated taxpayers, and miscellaneous lost souls, all can be calmed and soothed. The book is a marvelous Rx ("read two chapters and call me in the morning") to forestall ulcers and reduce stress. Even if you cannot do anything about the Red Tape around you, at least you will see it in a different perspective.

The term originated in England as a reference to the red ribbons once used to tie up legal documents. But now Red Tape suggests any complex, involved, slow, and seemingly pointless paperwork or procedures. No organization remains untouched, but the sheer mass of paperwork required by the federal government makes it the logical focus for any study of Red Tape. Not only do the feds generate paperwork at astronomical levels, but also they demand it from others -- over 2 billion forms must be submitted yearly. (Kaufman's book is not cluttered with such gee-whiz statistics, but there are some well-chosen facts.)

Like most people, I grew up with a knee-jerk reaction to the words "Red Tape" and the phrasing usually associated with it: "tied up in... snarled in... bogged down in...." These words, together with the stereotyped mental images (people enmeshed in mummy-like spools of tape, against a background of mountains of paper work, surrounded by desks piled high with disheveled papers) were cultural assumptions that I simply incorporated into my own writings. A few years ago, in discussing "confusion" techniques of language, I simply assumed that much obfuscation by officials was caused by bureaucrats defending themselves increasing the importance of their job, building paperwork empires. Red tape, it seemed to me, could be greatly cured with some common sense, prudence, and humility.

Later, however, I began to have second thoughts as I became an avid reader of those Mobile Oil "Observations" columns which appear in the graphic section of my Sunday newspaper (and 400 other newspapers throughout the country). What, pray tell, is Mobil trying to tell me, and a few other Americans, at a cost of $5 million a year in such "issue advocacy" advertising? Typically, the pattern of these popularly written columns is to present a subtle low key attack on government regulations: a humorous anecdote here telling about some bureaucratic blunder, "horror stories" about Red Tape snafus or the number of words in long-winded passages, pithy little sermons correcting our "misconceptions about profits." And, always, there are cartoons: a businessman talking to his shrink about Red Tape; another citizen, in Hell, filing out forms for the devil; a naked man before his empty closet because "they've banned everything"; a modern piece of sculpture before which puzzled people say: "It's either 'Gordian Knot' or 'Government Regulations'."

Mobil Oil -- and other large corporations -- have a vested interest in encouraging Red Tape horror stories, in encouraging a public mood hostile to any regulations. Both the Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the Federal Drug Administration, for example, have had a very bad press recently in which their problems of Red Tape have been emphasized: a mass of confusing regulations and restrictions, and some errors made. A common response, seen in letters to the editor and editorial cartoons, heard on radio talk shows and on television street interviews, is to throw out the baby with the bath water: get rid of the rules. Such simplistic thinking is dangerous to our society. Any FDA errors or even borderline cases (such as the saccharin decision) have to be put in the context of the problems involved in monitoring the more than 5,000 new chemical additives being used in foods today. Any OSHA paperwork nitpicking has to be put in context with the bloody and dangerous problems of industrial safety.

A most common reaction is to blame Red Tape on someone, to make scapegoats of government employees, especially two common stereotypes, the empire-building and the stupid clod. "It is conceivable," Kaufman writes, "that officials intent on aggrandizing their own power and protecting their own jobs would, unconsciously if not deliberately, contrive a blizzard of incomprehensible paper, a procedural maze, and a mass of technicalities that only someone completely familiar with these provisions could hope to find his way through." This entranced expert, this self-serving specialist, would thus use Red Tape as a defensive perimeter for personal security, ego trips, or whatever -- according to one version of who is to be blamed for Red Tape. The other version is in contradiction: it pictures bureaucrats as dull-witted oafs or fools. But Kaufman rejects both the conspiracy theory and the incompetency theory. In fact, he notes about government employees: "Nobody is more critical of Red Tape than they. To them, it is ironic that they should be blamed for it."

But there is a kernel of truth in both stereotypes. People do use jargon and verbal pomposity to intensify their own virtues, and they use euphemisms and evasions of downplay their own faults. And people do make errors. Everyone agrees that "unnecessary" paper work is bad. Everyone is against waste and "senseless regulations." The value of Kaufman's book is that it helps us to discriminate between unnecessary and necessary paperwork and procedures, to clarify what is senseless and what is sensible regulation, and to avoid either naive acceptance or uncritical rejection of what we call Red Tape.

In one sense, Kaufman's book is drawn from the work of the Commission on Federal Paperwork, which has issued a very forthright set of documents detailing the problems of confusion, redundancy, inconsistency, and chaos in the bureaucracy. The Final Summary Report (G.P.O. #052-003-00439-9, price: $2.20) is an excellent document, an overview of the thirty six other task force reports, and an introduction to the major issues of the burdens that paperwork imposes on our society. A sense of the tone of this document can be seen in this sample discussing some of the non-measurable costs of Red Tape:

Psychological burdens may be more important than dollar costs to individuals who experience:

- Frustration when completing complex forms;

- Anger when faced with multiple requests for similar data;

- Confusion in reading unclear instructions;

- Anxiety that errors may result in denial of benefits or legal consequences; and

- Fear that confidential information may be abused.

The overall tone of repenting, repairing, and resolving to do better may be appropriate to this solution oriented committee (they did make over 700 specific recommendations), but Kaufman has the freedom to remain more detached and sees many of the problems in Red Tape not as abnormal growths which can be pruned, but as consequences of some qualities basic to the ideals of our society: compassion and representatives.

Compassion leads government to prevent people from hurting each other. In the marketplace situation, a mass of regulations seeks to assure the purity of food, the safety of drugs, the honesty of advertising, the safety of toys, cars, railroads, airplanes, and so on. Compassion also spawns programs to help the poor, the aged, the blind, the disabled, the old, the unemployed, the victims of storms and droughts, and so on. Compassion also leads to complex interventions in an industrial society to keep the various systems in operation so as to prevent the catastrophe of a breakdown. Once the mandate is given, the Red Tape will follow:

"The moment a government program for a specified group gets started, legislation and administrative directives and court battles proliferate. It is essential to define who is in the group and who is not. The amounts of benefits and the criteria for determining who in the group is eligible for which amount must be established. Procedures for requesting benefits, for processing such applications, for distributing the benefits, and for settling disputes which applicants over their entitlements have to be set up. Preparations must be made to defend actions in court and to justify them to legislators representing disappointed constituents."

Representativeness leads government to be responsible. All of the procedures for due process can create a great deal of paperwork and Red Tape to insure equity: consider the Red Tape involved in two programs, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity. Disclosure regulations and public access rules make up another major body of regulations. Finally, the needed controls against dishonesty (theft, bribery, payoffs, embezzlement) account of many rules. "Much of the oft-satirized clumsiness, slowness, and complexity of government procedures is merely the consequence of all these precautions." Kaufman emphasizes: "Diversity, distrust, and democracy thus cause the profusion of constraints and the unwieldiness of the procedures that afflict us. It is in this sense we bring it on ourselves."

Proposals for reform commonly fall into four schools of thought: (1) eliminating or drastically reducing Federal services and regulations; (2) transferring functions to local governments; (3) creating stronger and more efficient centralized controls; (4) manipulating private sectors by incentives rather than regulations. Kaufman elaborates on the weaknesses in all of these proposals, arguing that panaceas and grand promises simply will not work. He suggests, however, some realistic ways to keep Red Tape manageable, under control: "The political system responds to pointed demands for specific actions, not to grand visions or all-embracing lamentations." He concedes that his suggestions are not glamorous or spectacular, nor will they yield dramatic results. But he argues that a specific attack on a particular procedures in a particular agency is more likely to get results than vague protests against Red Tape.

Learning to live with an increasing amount of Red Tape in the future is one of the harsh realities we have to face. False optimism that Red Tape can be cured, remedied, or dramatically reduced by simple solutions, will not help us. Nor will vague complaining. Nor will closing our eyes. We will never solve the paperwork problem if we think in terms of rigid metaphors of being "on top of it" or "in control," as if somehow one could tame the complex, dynamic, fluid processes that characterize human organizations. Yet, by changing metaphors slightly, maybe we can be on top: the object of swimming is not to walk on water, but to stay afloat, to get somewhere, and perhaps even to enjoy the experience. Kaufman's book will help us stay afloat in that proverbial sea of paperwork.

The composition process, the putting-things-together process, is an extremely vital human activity. When we fail, when we make errors, get confused, reach a stasis (in this case: get stalled or snarled in red tape), then it is a loss, a waste of human endeavor. Throughout the history of rhetoric and the teaching of composition, the greatest emphasis has been placed on correcting the "little" errors, or the errors of the "little elements": diction and syntax. This focus on words and sentences, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, even penmanship, may be valid for openers, but it is rather limited if this is the sum total of the teaching of composition in the schools. Older students, of course, write paragraphs and even "500-word essays," but there is little attention paid to the overall structures of anything over 500 words long. At best, English majors may occasionally be concerned with analyzing the structure of a poem, a play, or a novel, but this sustained task is random, not emphasized. Even more rare would be an analysis of an extended piece of nonfiction. An occasional speech or sermon might be analyzed (especially by Speech Department), but little attention has been given to how people have put together complex and extensive ideas, have imposed order on chaos, or, sadly, have not been able to order, to make things cohere.

If we do a poor job of concentrating on the structure of static forms, we do even less on the intricate composition process of dynamic structures. We should be interested any time anyone shows us how people can organize anything well. Whether it is a business operation, a political campaign, a military battle -- these are great human achievements. So also, any time anyone tells why anything falls apart, does not work, is disorganized, chaotic, decomposed, we ought to listen and learn.

From a composer's point of view, Red Tape suggests errors in sequences and relationships. In addition to the problems of organization, many red tape problems are specifically related to language: problems of jargon, circumlocution, ambiguity. It is one thing for government officials to issue the call for "simplified language" and "clear English"; it is another for anyone to deliver it. Good writers are rare in any occupation. The real problems are there, in every analysis of Red Tape we will read the same litany of complaints: "redundant... overlap... complicated... haphazard... too wordy... inconsistent... conflicting... contradictory... useless... unnecessary... complex... repetitious... uncoordinated... unclear... time-wasting... not standard" and so on. We need the applied intelligence of more people who are sensitive to language, who care about composition, to focus attention on these complex problems.

Red Tape is a public concern, affecting the common weal, deserving some attention from those who profess to study the language. While reading Kaufman's book, I recalled Cardinal Newman's distinction that a liberal education is not inherent in the subject matter: the liberally educated person can respond to the most mundane topic, such as Red Tape.