The People We Depend On Part I
Restoring a High View of Public Service
Imagine This Conversation
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”
Martin Luther King, Jr.[1]
This thought may not have ever occurred to the reader, but here’s a scenario for you to imagine:
You are back in your high school U. S. history class reading your assigned textbook. In it you read a passage where Alexander Hamilton declined serving as Secretary of Treasury in George Washington’s first presidential administration.
The reason Hamilton declines public service? Hamilton tells Washington that public service was a place where people worked that couldn’t find a job anywhere else. Further, Hamilton tells Washington that he wants to work where all the talented, exceptional people work- in the private sector, a place where he could make some real money!
Of course, this is all made up. It didn’t happen. But, what if it had? Could we imagine a scenario where our founders like Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and others with all the talents and abilities they possessed had viewed serving their government as something that was undesirable? What if they had actually chosen not to enter public service?
Fortunately for us, the opposite was the case. Our founders viewed public service as important, a type of calling, their civic duty. Yes, it could be difficult, but they knew they should serve their country, at least for a period of time. And it would see a pretty safe bet, that most Americans are glad our founders chose public service.
How Public Service is Viewed Today
But sadly, many Americans today actually do hold the view of public service expressed in this “make believe” conversation between Hamilton and Washington just put before the reader. For them, public service is not viewed as a “high calling” or important, vital work. They brand many (and for some, most) public employees as “less than”, without ambition, who work in government because they could not “cut it” in the private sector. Perhaps they view some, or even a large portion, as being corrupt.
You Might be Surprised at How Essential Those in Public Service are to Democracy
Unfortunately, such sentiments about public service work to the detriment of democracy.
Democracy depends on a cadre of dedicated, professional public employees who have chosen public service as a career field. Keep in mind that here we are not solely focusing on those that work for the federal government in Washington, D.C. Public service is much broader than that.
We are talking about your children’s teachers, your city’s police officers and firefighters, street maintenance workers, paramedics, county office employees, city planners, parks employees, and the thousands of Americans who work in state government, special districts, and the list goes on and on. And yes, we are also talking about those that serve us in positions in the federal government, many of which are career civil servants.
Many of these dedicated public employees are our neighbors, their kids are friends with ours, or they go to our church. In other words, they are “regular people”, just like us. But, can you imagine life without those employees and the jobs they do? Likely we would not notice they are missing until government services they provide cease. When they are no longer working, for example shutting down federal government services due to no budget agreement by Congress, we do indeed notice they are gone. Things grind to a halt.
Because of the thousands of Americans who commit their work lives to serving in the public sector, because of our need and dependance on the services they provide, and because of the importance of their service to our democracy, it is imperative that we understand the need to rekindle a high view of public service.
For that reason, in this series we will examine the importance of public service to democracy, how public service has developed in this country, how and why our views of it declined, as well as why people choose it as a career, and what we can do to restore a high view of public service in this nation.
The Call to Serve
It was a hot day on August 11, 1957, in the un-airconditioned Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, when the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke these now famous words mentioned above. According to Jarad Denton’s account, prior to saying this now well-known quote, King said:
“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise higher than the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. And this is one of the problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up victims of distorted and disrupted personality.”[2]
But Dr. King was not yet quite done, as he provided the prescription for this fundamental flaw of the human condition, self-centeredness, by saying:
“One of the best ways to rise above self-centeredness is to move away from self and objectify yourself in something outside of yourself. Find some cause and some great purpose, some loyalty to which you can give yourself and become so absorbed in that something that you give your life to it.”[3]
That is what the call to public service is all about- serving others. Sure, many people go to work in public service because they need a job. And yes, for some “it’s just a job”. But, for many people, it is far more than that. It is the reason they remain in public service and pursue it as a career field. They find it rewarding to serve others for the greater good. And for a democracy, that is a very good thing. Yet, all is not well for public service in America.
Along the Way, Something Has Changed
A critical element of our civic literacy is our basic attitude and view not only toward government, but to those who make government work- our public employees, public servants, or government workers. Whichever name you apply to them, the critical thought to keep at the forefront of one’s mind when we think of public employees is this- these are the people who provide our governmental services on a daily basis. Government workers are the ones who “make government work”. Their service exemplifies the exhortation Dr. King was making in his 1957 service- the importance of serving others. Government workers indeed have made the choice to serve others, to answer the high calling of public service.
The call to serve others is viewed by many, perhaps most, Americans, as important. At least, we would probably like to think that about ourselves as a nation. However, when it comes to the American view of serving others in the context of the public sector or what is commonly referred to as “government work”, our collective view of such service leaves much to be desired. Regardless, for a democracy to have civically literate citizens, a democracy’s citizens must see value in public service. They must see value not only in the government institutions that provide those services, but most importantly, they must see value in the thousands of individuals that have chosen public service as a career.
While most Americans desire “good government, we do not have a “high view” of government, at least not today, as evidenced by surveys over the last several years. In September 2020 the Pew Research Center reported the results of their annual survey of Americans regarding their view of government. Pew reported, “…For years public trust in the federal government has hovered at near-record lows. That remains the case to today, as we struggle with pandemic and economic recession. Just 20% of U.S. adults say they trust the government in Washington to “do the right thing” just about always or most of the time.”[4]
It is easy to overlook that these public servants are the ones who, long after elected officials retire or lose their next election, work tirelessly behind the scenes (often at wages below comparable private sector positions) to provide us with responsive, cost effective, and efficient services within the framework of a democratic republic. When they are not successful in the area of cost effectiveness, timeliness, or efficiency of the services they provide, when one examines the reasons why, often the reason or reasons is lack of resources or legal or administrative constraints that have been placed on them. In plain language, most of the time they are “doing the best they can with what they have to work with”.
Do we understand why our view of government has been clouded by conflicting and competing values regarding it?
The Roots of Our Contradictory Views of Government and Public Service
The United States was born out of rebellion and revolution, with anger and dissatisfaction as to how American colonists were being treated by King George and the British government. Many Americans say they love their government, characterizing it as the best form of government in the world. At the same time, we Americans have always “loved to hate government”, most especially our own. We seem to have a natural suspicion of it.
With those many contradictory feelings about government, that does not mean that we do not want “good government” for ourselves. Far from it. Collectively, we Americans want, no, we expect good government. When we become dissatisfied enough with it, we will make efforts, sometimes very drastic efforts, to obtain it. Never mind that we Americans often have very different ideas as to what constitutes “good government”.
When examining our nation’s history, strong evidence exists that early on public service to one’s government was considered honorable, even encouraged. Fortunately for us, many or our best and brightest, whom today we consider founders or “icons” of our civic history, chose to spend much, if not all, of their lives in service to their government. Think of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, Lincoln, and so on (and there are many lesser known but very impactful public servants), and it is easy to see that performing public service was not viewed negatively by these leaders, fortunately for our nation. In fact, they wanted to serve. They chose public service as a career, at least for a portion of their lives.
While we are a nation born out of a dissatisfaction with government, and today our confidence in our government and those that serve in it is not high, we continue to want good government. If that is the case, then how did we get to where we are today- a nation desiring good government with a low view of government and, most importantly, does not seem to hold those who work in government in high esteem?
Some of the answer is, we have done it to ourselves. Another part of the answer is most Americans seemingly do not know the history of how poorly their government was administered in its first one hundred plus years of existence compared to how it is administered today. They have no point of comparison as to how much it has improved, as well as the reforms undertaken to improve our government’s operation to what it is today (please note; this is not to say it cannot be further improved, it always can be).
Our “Shipwrecked View” of Public Service
Imagine you are the captain of an ocean-going vessel. While in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you decide to drill holes in the bottom of the ship to see how fast it would sink. Or, if you prefer a non-nautical analogy, imagine you are building your “dream house”, but shortly after framing the house you decide to take a sledgehammer to the foundation. Hardly a wise move, right? Or, maybe you decide to drill holes in your dream home’s new roof to see how badly it might leak. Not wise either, right? Of course not.
While these are nonsensical examples, they illustrate a basic point. Over time, our public officials, especially elected public officials, have denigrated in the minds of American citizens, the very thing we should be venerating- our government and those employed in it. It is the “ship” that is going to get us across the figurative “ocean”, it is our figurative “dream house”. How can it make sense to try to denigrate it? How do these elected officials go about performing this denigration?
Reagan Begins the Demolition of JFK’s Public Service Vision?
Usually, they do it by pointing to those in public service (government employees). In the 1960s many Americans embraced the inspiration of President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech exhorting us to, before thinking about serving ourselves, think first of serving our country.[5] Beginning in the 1980s we shifted paradigms to the political expediency still used today of making government or public service a “punching bag” to blame for whatever problem an elected official is trying to lay blame on.
According to the Raleigh News & Observer’s Editorial Board, President Ronald Reagan helped fade JFK’s inspiration to aspire to public service with “…his assertion that government is a problem, not a solution, and the mockery of public servants implicit in this line: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”.[6] Then News & Observer goes on to say:
“…The denigration continued for decades as Republicans in state legislatures and Congress let public pay fall far below private sector compensation, and it has intensified sharply under (now former) President Trump. He has rolled back civil service protections, left a raft of key posts vacant, fired inspectors general and fed the paranoia that “deep state” bureaucrats have sought to undermine his presidency…”[7] (emphasis mine)
The Assault on Public Service Has Only Accelerated
William J. Burns, a former State Department career service member and President of the Carnegie Endowment, wrote along this theme for The Atlantic in 2020, saying:
“Trump rode these grievances to the White House, accelerating them with unprecedented venom. The catastrophically sad result after nearly four years of his leadership is that government agencies are adrift; career experts are ignored or maligned on everything, including their weather forecasts and their intelligence assessments; corruption is as rampant as oversight is repressed; and the whims of a clinically self-absorbed president overpower good governance. The pandemic has laid bare the debilitating consequences of Trump’s assault on expertise and smart government policies and programs, leaving the United States far more vulnerable and less resilient than it should be.”[8] (emphasis mine)
We now hear this derisive language about those in public service and the government departments they serve so regularly that many of us are likely desensitized to it, so much so that we barely notice it. We just consider it political rhetoric used to get elected or stay in office. However, the damage it does to our collective American view of government and those who have chosen (or might choose) government service as a career, is highly toxic. Confidence in government, including those who serve in it, is paramount for sustaining democracy.
The people we elect to top positions regularly describe in the most negative way possible the employees that serve in the institutions that are designed to serve We the People. Ironically, whether they realize it or not, these are the people who these elected officials must depend on for their success as a congressman, senator, vice president, or president!
How can we be surprised that Americans have a negative view of public service when they are constantly bombarded with such negative labeling? We hear it so much that we start to believe there actually is a cabal called the “deep state”, even though it is nothing more than yet another of the conspiracy theories Americans love to embrace. And, what about those “bureaucrats”? Now, many of us see them as the worst!
Why? Because our president, governors, senators, representatives, and many other elected officials tell us so. These elected officials make these statements seemingly unaware or uncaring that the institutions they depend on for their success in carrying out their official duties as elected officials, are staffed by the very people they now describe almost as something akin to the “spawn of Satan”.
Do we even know where the term “bureaucrat” came from? Do we know what existed in the way of government administration before what we now “love to hate”, the bureaucracy, came to be? Probably not, because if we did, we would perhaps be a little more hesitant before believing all the negative things that are constantly said and written about bureaucrats and bureaucracy.
Stay tuned! Next we will examine the condition of public service in the United States for its first one hundred years, the call for reform, and the forces that began to degrade public service in this country.
We will continue exploring topics like this one that are not given near enough time and emphasis in our civic education efforts, if they are even taught at all.
Democracy is so important. But it’s hard to keep, and it’s easy to lose. It’s up to us, and only us, to protect it. Support democracy, become a Democratist!
[1] “Life’s Most Persistent Question”, by Senior Airman Jarad A. Denton, 63rd Air base Wing Public Affairs, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, VA, December 17, 2012, https://www.jble.af.mil./News/Commentary/Display/Article/260233/life-most-persistent-quesiton/#:~:text=Martin%Luther%20King%2C%20Jr.,11%2C%201957
[2] “Life’s Most Persistent Question”, by Senior Airman Jarad A. Denton, 63rd Air base Wing Public Affairs, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, VA, December 17, 2012, Ibid
[3] “Life’s Most Persistent Question”, by Senior Airman Jarad A. Denton, 63rd Air base Wing Public Affairs, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, VA, December 17, 2012, Ibid
[4]“Americans View of Government: Low Trust, but Some Positive Performance Ratings”, Pew Research Center, September 14, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/09/14americans-view-of-government-low-trust-but-some-positive-performance-ratings/ and Public Trust in Government: 1958-2023 | Pew Research Center
[5] John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 1961, Voices of Democracy, https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/kennedy-inaugural-address-speech-text
[6] “After Trump, Let’s Appreciate Public Service Again”, Editorial Board, Raleigh News & Observer, November 15, 2020, 1:34PM, https://www.newobserver.com/opinion/article247168271.html and The President's News Conference | Ronald Reagan (reaganlibrary.gov)
[7] After Trump, Let’s Appreciate Public Service Again”, Editorial Board, Raleigh News & Observer, November 15, 2020, 1:34PM, Ibid.
[8] “America Needs a Rebirth of Public Service”, by William J. Burns, May 4, 2020, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/america-needs-a-rebirth-of-public-service/610972