One feature of government bureaucracy which is most unsettling is that its constituents tend to disassociate its agents' wrongdoings from the failings of the whole system. Constituents, whether voters or members of a government agency, tend to assign higher and more abstract authority to the office than it has historically warranted. Much as we referred to the "operational Air Force" during my days at the United States Air Force Academy, we invoke a nebulous and impossibly-abstract notion of what the institution represents, while its beginnings are rooted in rousing controversy and its actions have been hopelessly mired in dire disappointment. As the institution endures, it begins to assume a life of its own, independent of its history and the flesh and blood which has comprised it. Constituents everywhere either tolerate the inadequacy, out of confusion, disinterest or capitulation, or they create excuses for it by blaming the controller instead of the s...