NO ONE IS REALLY IN CHARGE OF ANYTHING.

That doesn't stop people from going to Washington City with delusions of Doing Good.  Jonah Goldberg notes, "This is a hard lesson for people who put immense faith in government to do big, important things."  That might be a strange Trenchant Observation as we observe the sesquicentennial of the Pacific Railroad, and yet, the work that generations of railroaders have done to get the Overland Route into the state it is today does not refute him.