Nothing good ever happens after midnight: The Curse of the Lame Duck!

Did your mother/father ever warn you that nothing-good-ever- happens-after midnight? Or maybe the witching hour was 11 p.m. Or even 10 o’clock?

The exact hour when things go bad probably depended on how much your parents wanted to scare you. And their own experiences when they were younger.

Most of us learn that in fact, lots of good stuff happens after midnight. Sometimes the very best stuff. But the be-careful warning is useful because it is often true. There is also a national political version of the midnight rule that seems to be playing out, again, right now.

Second terms often go badly for Presidents even as (or maybe because) they are trying to leave a legacy. Call it The Curse of the Lame Duck! It seems to happen whether POTUS is a Republican or Democrat. Whether it is a time of war, or peace, things often go wrong just when the finish line is in sight.

But the lame duck curse can work for feds because they cease being targets or the punching bag of choice.

Democrats in Congress are giving the President, who once could do no wrong, legislative heartburn. They are balking over everything from trade to Iraq. The President’s new BFFs are Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the Senate and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in the House.

The Supreme Court may be about to deliver a decision that could damage the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, which was supposed to be the cornerstone of the President’s legacy. Even if it doesn’t, there have been happier times for the administration.

Lots of the best and brightest political appointees who came to Washington are looking for other jobs. Few of them are likely to be kept on even if the next President is another Democrat. Tougher enforcement makes it harder these days for political appointees to “burrow” into career civil service jobs during the waning years of an administration.

Now there is a “breach”, or rather, the breaches of highly sensitive, national-security threatening data involving 4 million people and maybe more. Most if not all current employees, many former workers and about 1 million retirees. If not more.

This is the kind of issue where just about everybody — from former media friends to once cloying politicians — feel obligated, and free, to pile on. What did they know and when did they know it? Who will be fed to the lions?

The House and Senate, again, aren’t on pace to approve agency appropriations by the end of the fiscal year. Nobody is talking about pending bills to “reform” (as in downsize) civil service benefits. And the proposed 1.3 percent 2016 pay raise — which in normal times would be a major target — is still on track because it’s off the hit-list radar.

So while the battles at the top of government may be unsettling, many feds have decided to go with the flow and enjoy their time out of the spotlight.

May the curse be with you!

Read all of Federal News Radio’s coverage of the OPM Cyber Breach.

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID

By Michael O’Connell

There is a duck in South America called “The Argentinian Vampire Duck”, which eats lice off of other ducks. Christian missionaries thought this activity was a form of vampirism, which is how the duck got its name.

Source: AICP.net

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