EVERYONE who cares already knows what’s in and what’s not in Postmaster General Jack Potter’s postal transformation plan. There are some who see value in the document while others find it lacking.
What should be clear is this: The job of defining what the nature of our postal system should be is being left to Congress and the White House. That should come as no surprise. The U.S. Constitution clearly states that Congress holds the ultimate power over post roads, not the postmaster general. Anyone who really thought that this PMG was going to set about writing a new architectural plan for the USPS without Congress’ and the Bush administration’s participation and leadership must have been out to lunch.
Defining the future of the American postal system is, as they say, “above the PMG’s pay grade.” The worst thing he could have done would have been to write a very detailed, prescriptive plan for change. That merely would have given his enemies and critics the opportunity to harp on how this facet or that of the plan was “infeasible,” “unworkable,” or lacking in some manner. In Washington, people have honed finely the art of telling you what won’t work. The trouble is, they never seem willing to say what will.
In a town that saw a national leader declare that “the buck stops here,” it’s amazing how much of Washington is about passing the buck. I have no doubt that Congress and the White House had hoped Potter’s articulation of some bold transformation initiative would have allowed the cup of postal reform to pass from their lips. To their chagrin, that’s not going to be the case.
Postal reform is not an issue that can be dispensed with lightly. In order to write a suitable prescription for change, one must first accurately diagnose the nature of the postal service’s ills, determine the broadest array of possible courses of remedial action, evaluate the pluses and minuses of each alternative, and ultimately choose a treatment that best fits the political and economic circumstances.
OK. After seven years of bush-league political games and the extortion of a transformation plan, the preliminaries are over. It’s time for Congress and the president to step up to the plate.
GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.
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