Before 1980 the federal government did not shut down
Jimmy Carter’s attorney-general changed how America is governed
PUBLIC-RELATIONS professionals know that the best time to release bad news is late on Friday afternoons. Hacks and their editors have one foot out of the door; nobody wants to put their weekend plans on hold to start a new story. America has recently discovered that a similar rule holds true for government shutdowns: if it happens just before Christmas, when federal workers are already on holiday and nobody is paying much attention to the news, then the waste and pain will not seep into the headlines for a couple of weeks.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “This town, shut down”
From the January 12th 2019 edition
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