WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Vice President Al Gore is pushing for an executive measure that will require federal
bureaucrats to write in simple language. The same thing, it might be recalled, happened under Jimmy
Carter, who could have used some remedial English himself. Mr. Gore, who wants to be President, is also
an unlikely reformer.

He speaks as though perpetually addressing a fifth-grade class. One can’t, for example, imagine him
telling a group of federal employees that "no longer shall you be permitted to vent your loquacity with
extraneous bombastic circumlocution." But the Vice President does have a creative side.

He says he invented the Internet. And one can believe his claim that he wrote Earth in the Balance, which
the Unabomber liked so much, all by himself. But the problem Gore seeks to fix is not one of language but
bureaucracy.

Writing is a difficult and demanding job and bureaucrats are writers only in the sense of someone
who paints WOMEN on a bathroom door. For the most part, bureaucrats are people who have been promoted to their highest level of incompetence. This is one reason why governments usually function poorly and why the
oxymoron "government worker" always gets a laugh. "Government writer" should do the same.

Writers clarify complicated themes by constructing a logical narrative in which one idea follows another.
But this is not what bureaucrats do because, unlike writers, they have a vested interest in obfuscation.
That’s why they take simple ideas and make them complicated, never using a word where a paragraph will
do. As Orwell noted, sloppy language is the result of sloppy thinking or a deceptive purpose. Since both
conditions are characteristic of bureaucracy, government writing will always will be a mess.

The federal bureaucracy, which the sort of policies favored by Mr. Gore would greatly expand, is not
elected by the people but is in the business of making and enforcing rules. They try hard to make this process
look good, and to give the impression that citizens are getting the best value for their tax dollars. But the
task is essentially impossible. Instead of giving out a monthly "No Gobbledygook" award, Mr. Gore should
encourage the entire governing apparatus in Washington to draft a plain-language statement about its current
condition and purposes.

"Our fellow Americans," it would read, "the impenetrable language we produce is the least of our
problems. We are well aware of the massive failure of past government programs but we continue to push for
new ones because their consequences won’t be apparent until we are safely out of office and living on the
comfy federal pensions that you common citizens can’t share. We still count on generations not yet born to
bear the cost of past failures and it doesn’t bother us that even now all Americans are born in debt because
enacting those programs enabled us to feel noble. Neither does it bother us that taxes are the biggest
expenditure for many Americans. Therefore, instead of having faith in us, you should be working to limit
government and take responsibility for your own lives."

All politicians know this is true, but we won’t see such a document. As Mr. Gore might say, there is no
controlling legal authority for it.

--K. Lloyd Billingsley