Oversight is a cliché that congressmen and senators reliably speak of. So what is oversight and why is it a cliché? Oversight is the process by which Congress investigates the executive branch of government. It has become a cliché, because it is talked about way more than it is carried out.

All politics in every culture – totalitarian, democratic, despotic or enlightened – lives on clichés. Truisms are essential, because they define the sameness and the predictability that is essential for government stability.

In a democratic culture, however, it is critical that the stability be disturbed every once in awhile. The executive branch of American government has grown large and incompetent because Congress does not pay attention and because a succession of ineffective chief executives, both Democrat and Republican.

Congressmen or senators who conduct real oversight are tiresome scolds. Sen. William Proxmire, who awarded the Golden Fleece Award, was our last full-fledged congressional muckraker.

Now we have Akira Nagatsuma – a former journalist who has become the scourge of the Japanese bureaucracy as an opposition member of the upper house of that nation’s Parliament. The New York Times profiled Nagatsuma Saturday.

In a description that could well be applied to the American federal government, Nagatsuma said: “If the bureaucracy is a horse, politicians and the people are riding the horse without holding the reins. We’re just sitting on the horse and letting it decide the country’s direction.”

Like a good investigative reporter, Mr. Nagatsuma succeeds for two reasons. He expects the bureaucracy to be dishonest and even criminal, and he is a good interrogator.

The Bush Administration has presented America and Congress with two dangerous traits. It has been largely an ineffective manager of the sprawling federal establishment. The president has installed political cronies instead of proven managers. Secondly, the president and vice president have set up barriers to the free flow of information – in some cases exercising censorship of science and free discourse among government scientists and managers.

When Republicans controlled Congress, passivity pervaded Capitol Hill. The legislative branch virtually shirked its Constitutionally-mandated task. A few Democrats such as Congressmen Henry Waxman of California now work at oversight.

Let’s face it, most politicians know how to get face time on television, but are hopelessly ineffective as investigators. Japan’s Mr. Nagatsuma reminds why the investigative drive is essential.