Politics & Power Quote by Warren Rudman

Calling a sweeping reform “indigestion” is the kind of folksy metaphor that does serious political work. Rudman isn’t just saying the plan was too big; he’s framing government reorganization as something the body politic must metabolize. Big gulps don’t just fail on the merits, they make the whole system sick. The image flatters “common sense” and sets a practical baseline: competence looks like restraint.

The intent is tactical as much as philosophical. “Relatively small bites” is a blueprint for how change survives contact with Washington: incremental steps that can be explained, implemented, and defended before the next budget cycle or election. In a capital built on veto points - committees, agencies, stakeholders, and rival jurisdictions - massive reorganizations invite every threatened interest to coordinate resistance. By contrast, smaller moves divide the opposition, generate early wins, and make later steps feel inevitable.

The subtext is also a warning about reformers’ hubris. Grand restructurings are often sold as cleansing overhauls, but they typically scramble accountability, freeze agencies in transition, and create new layers of bureaucracy while promising fewer. “Bad idea” reads less like partisan sniping than an institutional memory talking: someone who’s seen well-branded reorganizations collapse under their own administrative complexity.

Context matters: Rudman’s career sits in an era when Americans demanded a leaner, more efficient state, yet distrusted the disruption required to get there. The metaphor gives skeptical moderates permission to want change without wanting upheaval - reform as digestion, not revolution.