"The problem is that agencies sometimes lose sight of common sense as they create regulations"
About this Quote
Fred Thompson points to a familiar tension in American governance: expert agencies are built to translate broad laws into actionable rules, yet their distance from daily life can breed rigidity and overreach. Common sense here stands for proportionality, practicality, and an awareness of tradeoffs. When rulemaking drifts from those touchstones, results can be baffling to citizens and businesses who must live with the directives. Think of one-size-fits-all mandates that swamp small operators with paperwork designed for large firms, or safety rules that optimize for theoretical risks while ignoring real-world costs and workarounds. The process that produces such outcomes is not usually malicious; it is fueled by mission tunnel vision, risk aversion, and incentives to eliminate every edge case. What begins as expertise can calcify into a system that prizes procedural correctness over problem-solving.
Thompson knew the machinery well. As a U.S. senator and chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee, he pressed for oversight of the administrative state, arguing that delegated power must stay tethered to congressional intent and public reasonableness. The line resonates today amid fights over the scope of agency authority and the courts reassessing judicial deference to agency interpretations. It captures a broader democratic worry: rules should serve people, not trap them, and expertise should remain accountable to common judgment.
None of this dismisses the necessity of regulation. Markets depend on clear rules for safety, competition, and fairness. The challenge is to build feedback loops that keep rules humble: rigorous cost-benefit analysis, genuine public comment, retrospective review, and flexibility for experimentation. When agencies invite ground-level knowledge and measure outcomes rather than merely compliance, they recover the common sense Thompson invokes. Regulation done well protects without smothering, sets firm guardrails while leaving room for ingenuity, and remembers that the goal is not a flawless rulebook but a society that works.
Thompson knew the machinery well. As a U.S. senator and chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee, he pressed for oversight of the administrative state, arguing that delegated power must stay tethered to congressional intent and public reasonableness. The line resonates today amid fights over the scope of agency authority and the courts reassessing judicial deference to agency interpretations. It captures a broader democratic worry: rules should serve people, not trap them, and expertise should remain accountable to common judgment.
None of this dismisses the necessity of regulation. Markets depend on clear rules for safety, competition, and fairness. The challenge is to build feedback loops that keep rules humble: rigorous cost-benefit analysis, genuine public comment, retrospective review, and flexibility for experimentation. When agencies invite ground-level knowledge and measure outcomes rather than merely compliance, they recover the common sense Thompson invokes. Regulation done well protects without smothering, sets firm guardrails while leaving room for ingenuity, and remembers that the goal is not a flawless rulebook but a society that works.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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