“I don’t rule Russia. Ten thousand clerks do.”

— Tsar Nicholas II

Not true, alas. 99% of CBP wants to do the exact opposite of what they are now doing, that is, building walls and mass deporting unlawful migrants instead of being the welcome wagon and processing their intake forms like the receptionist at a doctor’s office, being travel agents and arranging free transportation to the destination of their choice, and hooking them up with taxpayer-funded NGOs who will make sure they get nicely settled in and receive every manner of welfare benefit. Oh, also, with the help of a large number of military personnel who have been assigned to help out and who also don’t want to. But they all got their orders from that thin veneer of political appointees, and they are obeying those orders. To try to cram all that into ‘just a veto’ is criminal abuse of the English language.

“It’s not that the election changes the staff at TSA or FBI, except for a thin veneer of political appointees. American democracy has long since given up on the dangerous notion that voters can be trusted to replace their government through the electoral process. TSA is TSA, FBI is FBI; they think what they think; they want to feel you up and pwn your computer.

Thus, in every administration, the agencies are the same agencies and will agitate for the same policies. [...]

What the political veneer can do, however, is stop things. The White House cannot make an agency anything it is not, or make it do anything it doesn’t want to do. It does not have personnel, budgetary, or even policy control over the “executive branch.” But it has a veto.”