Things I Learned as a Government Bureaucrat

Having served your US federal government for thirty-eight years (yes, I like to say I was press-ganged into service as a child. Back then, they grabbed unsuspecting waifs off the street and took them to DC as laborers), I later realized I knew a lot about how the government really works. Lessons of which the average citizen was unaware. Some of these might be simply informative. A few have applications in regular life. Given the inflamed state of our society today, I submit them for your consideration:

• You don’t have to make your opinion known. You can work in an incredibly politicized area like government policy and NOT opine about politics. This used to be the standard practice among the bureaucracy. It started to erode about the time “not my President” bumper stickers started showing up in federal employee parking lots after the disputed 2000 election (Bush v. Gore, and all that). It really took off with the “resistance” to President Trump. Now even allegedly nonpartisan types like intelligence community officials weigh in with their party preferences. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I learned early on in the career that it wasn’t my job to critique who the voters sent into office. My job was to bring my expertise to bear within the limits of “supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, . . . ” and nothing else. Critique policies to the leaders espousing them? Of course. But publicly criticize them or their policies? Never, and don’t get me started on those who privately try to subvert such policies. There is a time and a place for those who resign in protest, but there is a place in hell for eternity for those who take it upon themselves to undermine American policy (looking at you, Eddie Snowden). I know some friends cheer on those who work against leaders they dislike, and see them as heroic. I would only caution those who do so: you do not want federal bureaucrats getting the notion it’s ok for them to decide what the government should do. Because when they do, they’ll decide they don’t need the voters.

• The overwhelming majority of the federal workforce is well-meaning, dedicated, hard-working, and competent. There are 2.2 million full-time federal employees, almost 3 million if you include part-timers. It’s the largest employer in the nation, forty percent larger than Walmart or Amazon (the runners up). Because of its size alone, there are good and bad employees. There are executives who strive to keep the common good in mind at all times, and careerists looking for promotions at any cost. There are agencies with a deep sense of purpose, and some which seem to be looking for something to do. There are malingerers already retired-on-active-duty and workaholics who put in eighty-hour weeks (but only get paid for forty).

Federal government employment has some unique qualities. It requires relinquishing certain rights, like the right to campaign publicly for a party or candidate. It insists on strict hiring processes to avoid nepotism, and protects workers from political favoritism. It pays lower-skilled positions at an above-market rate, and higher-skilled positions at a below-market rate. All these things have both positive and negative effects of the workforce.

One thing that unifies this grand, diverse group is a sense of patriotic purpose leavened with expertise. If you want to clean up pollution, you learn about environmental science and get a job at the Environmental Protection Agency. If you want to protect the border, you study law enforcement and seek work at Customs and Border Protection. When I was working the strategic arms negotiations, across the table at my US policy sessions was a representative from the US Arms Control & Disarmament Agency (ACDA). That rep studied international relations (like me), but was dedicated to reducing the number of weapons in the world, while I represented the Pentagon and (at least) more and better weapons for our side. We argued incessantly, but I never believed the other rep had anything but American success as a goal and solid expertise as a means.

I received (courtesy of your tax dollars, ¡Gracias!) loads of training, including two Masters Degrees, a stint at the Federal Executive Institute, executive education courses at Harvard, Columbia, and Oxford, and a failed typing course (still two-fingered, thank you very much!). I got to see all types and manners of federal employees, and they fit the generalization with which I started this section. They aren’t infallible, they get things wrong (see Covid, 2019). But they’re executing laws they didn’t write under the direction of leaders they didn’t choose for people they don’t ever see. That’s why they don’t get paid much, but don’t get fired much, either.

• If you think the media just started to portray the government inaccurately, you haven’t been paying attention. When I returned to Washington, DC in 1987, I started that job working on arms control. I had heard all about how dangerous Ronald Reagan was, I had seen firsthand the enormous anti-American rallies in West Germany, read the stories about the Machiavellian characters in the Reagan Administration. Now I was a back-bencher, sitting in meetings with these same characters. And I learned the press was full of shite, as they say in Ireland.

Sometimes the different factions arguing over policy would leak tainted information about their opponents or policies, and the media would lap it up (sometimes gullibly, sometimes willingly, always because it made for good copy, which was that era’s equivalent to today’s “eyeballs.”). Other times some important meeting would be held and nothing would leak, so the reporters just made stories up. Oftentimes the media attributed bad intentions to policies they didn’t like, or questioned the ethics of officials they disfavored. If called on it, they simply offered, “you can tell me the real story” which, of course, would be a leak, too.

All this was happening back when the press publicly described itself as nonpartisan and independent, a fourth estate which kept tabs on the government, and when media was comfortably atop a communications hierarchy that attracted sufficient advertising and revenue. So today when media sources are often at risk of folding, “eyeballs” are everything, and reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post insist that balance or fairness are pro-fascism, mind what you read and believe. Because it’s probably at best partly true, and that’s the worst kind of lie.

• Having a friend in the federal government doesn’t help. People sometimes think, “hey, my cousin works for the FBI, maybe she can help me with this IRS letter.” Short answer: no. It seems natural, right? If your aunt worked at the bank, you might expect the bank manager to give you at least an opportunity to talk about a loan. If your sister was with the DMV, you’d expect to not wait in line for your license renewal. But for federal employees, it is against the law to represent a third party (that is, a friend, family member, or frankly anybody) back to the federal government. The key word here is represent, which is a formal thing. Could I call up a friend at another agency and ask some questions about a process, or the best way to do something? Absolutely. But could I call that same person up and say, “My uncle wants to get a small business loan from your agency’s program; how can you help?” Only if I wanted to get fired and prosecuted.

• If you want to live forever, become a government program. Every department, bureau, agency and administration has a perfectly legitimate problem it was designed to solve. In some cases, those problems will never be solved; I’m thinking here of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, which we’ll need until after the Parousia. In some cases, the agency evolves to do other things. The Secret Service was started in the 19th century to combat currency counterfeiting (if you watched the old Wild, Wild West television show, you already knew that!). Then President McKinley got assassinated and they got the mission to protect the President. But others simply morph over time. I was against the establishment of intelligence elements in the Department of Homeland Security, because I reasoned that if all they needed to do was be an information conduit, that was better done by technology and rules, nor organizations. If you put analysts and collectors together, eventually they’ll go looking for threats to collect against. And you’ll have an analyst writing about the possibility of Islamic terrorists turning Desert Storm vets into domestic violent extremists, or the dangers of rad-trad Catholics.

Once a government program starts, it is well-nigh impossible to end it. Bureaucracies are full of true-believers who are almost incapable of considering, “what if our mission simply went away.” I was involved with two reductions-in-force and several re-organizations. At more than one position, I offered to eliminate functions or elements. Most of the time, the very offer was met with horror. It was the one thing no one in the workforce or leadership (generally) would consider. So you have to have an external forcing-function if you ever want to reconsider what the government is doing and how much it is spending.

• Related to the previous point, the federal government is a hardy, perennial, invasive crop. It thrives almost anywhere you plant it, and it tends to spread. If your agency works to clean the soil, eventually someone points out that the water is dirty, too, and dirty water endangers the soil, so you need to clean it too. Then the air. Then emissions, then second-hand smoke, then bovine flatulence. Each step seems incremental and logical at the time, but in the aggregate it makes one wonder where it stops. Because it never does. And of course it takes a few more federal government employees to do the new missions.

There are some things only the federal government can do. Even in those areas, the people and their representatives must take care when charging the federal bureaucracy with a mission, keeping in mind the traits I cited above. The bureaucracy has a natural tendency to want to solve problems, but that can be a problem unto itself. The federal government is neither a deep-seated conspiracy (the “Deep State”) nor a Confederacy of Dunces. It’s patriotic Americans showing up and doing a job. Some good, some less so. And everything they do has been approved by both the Congress and the White House, and sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Next time you want to scream, “who put these clowns in charge?” remember: you did, I did, we all did.