The fact is that eighty or ninety percent of all government business - and all government power - lies in the hands of faceless and unelected bureaurcrats and petty commissars, an enormous number of whom are anal retentive control freaks who love nothing better than to tell others what to do and how to do it. Democrats and Republicans come and go, but bureaucrats go on forever.
Most of the current batch of bureaucrats in non security positions were appointed during the Clinton Administration.