|
Fellows
By Timothy B. Clark
A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand
words. And in this period of mourning and remembrance a year
after the tragedy of September 11, we are inundated in images
of that terrible day and its aftermath - on television and
in our magazines and newspapers.
Photographs of the World Trade Towers, of
the heroic rescuers in Manhattan and at the Pentagon, of the
destruction and rebuilding - these have come to symbolize
an event that is certainly the most consequential of the new
century.
Somehow these images, accompanied as they
are today by patriotic music, appeal to our 21st century need
to have modern technology--video and audio--mark an important
turning point in our national life.
The images are everywhere, but in my estimation
they cannot and should not serve as substitutes for the written
and spoken word. Generations of American leaders have risen
to countless occasions with oratory appropriate to the moment,
and we should expect no less now.
In New York tomorrow, at Ground Zero, leaders
of the nation and of New York State will gather to mark the
anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.
They will read from the Gettysburg Address,
and Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech, but they are not expected
to deliver their own thoughts on the meaning of 9/11 and its
portent for the future.
This dim day in the history of American
oratory seems destined to reflect poorly on the quality of
our political leaders.
How can they not summon the fortitude to
say a few words appropriate to the moment, in the interests
of celebrating the lives of those innocents lost in the terrorist
attacks and the heroism of those dealing with the aftermath?
How can they think that words written many
decades ago, in different times and circumstances, can suffice
to salve the unhealed wounds of today?
The job does not seem so hard.
They could begin by recognizing, and even
celebrating, the return to prominence in our national life
of people like those here in this room today.
For it is to the public sector, not the
private sector so gloried during the past generation, that
our nation has turned in its moment of crisis.
This meeting has been about renewing the
public sector by seeking and finding its most important resource
- the next generation of people to make it work.
It comes, if I might borrow a phrase from
Dickens, at the intersection between the worst of times and
what we might hope is the best of times for the public sector.
It is no secret to anyone in this room that
the federal government has been suffering for many years.
In these worst of times, government has
become a place of last resort for bright young people planning
their careers.
You in this room have your own perspectives
on the reasons for that.
To be sure, some are of the troubles are
self-inflicted.
Jobs are encrusted in rulebooks of regulations,
and layers of hierarchy.
Group-grope decision making carries with
it diffusion of accountability.
A newcomer to government may readily see
an ancient ship of state so laden with barnacles as to be
nigh on to foundering.
I think you have to be below decks, where
the rowing is done, to fully appreciate these demoralizing
aspects of bureaucracy.
But viewed from the outside by a sympathetic
observer, the troubles are not mainly attributable to the
failings of bureaucracy itself.
They are a consequence of our politics and
the nature of leadership we have chosen in the White House,
in Congress and even in our state and local offices.
If, as one can readily argue, our leadership
does not value much of the work now done by the executive
branch of the federal government, that should come as small
surprise.
After all, we trace our heritage to people
who were determined, more than two centuries ago, to throw
off the yoke of central government.
The most compelling recent account of the
debates that surrounded the founding of the United States
late in the 18th century is found in Joseph Ellis's book,
Founding Brothers.
Reading the book, one is struck by the passion
that existed then about the role of government. And we hear
echoes of these debates year after year here in Washington.
Only reluctantly, one concludes after many
years of watching, do Congress and the President move to expand
the powers of the central government.
They dance to a tune played by generations
of politicians. Many of you will remember that it was in 1964
that George Wallace, running for President, pledged to throw
the pointy-headed Washington bureaucrats into the Potomac,
briefcases and all.
And that 16 years later, Ronald Reagan declared
that government was not the solution but the problem.
And that men like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush all ran as outsiders who liked little about
the state of affairs in our federal government.
But let us look for a moment at a brighter
side of things.
From the tragedy of 9/11 has come a renewed
appreciation for the essential work of the public sector.
Wall Street is not Nirvana. Greed is no
longer good. Firemen, not money men, are cast in heroes' roles.
The change was described in eloquent terms
by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, who
is now leading the National Commission on the Public Service.
Speaking to our Excellence in Government Conference in mid-July,
Volcker observed that he lives in New York….
…. a city that likes to think of itself
as the center of finance and private enterprise. I've spent
most of my life in the world of finance [he said], a world
filled in the 1990s with a strong sense of unique achievement
and triumph. Then, for a moment amid the tragedy, there was
a profoundly different perspective.
Suddenly the heroes were not investment
bankers displaying their Lucite tokens of paper deals or financial
engineers thinking up ever more abstruse techniques for structuring
transactions. It was the firefighters and the police who were
on the spot, responding with a sense of duty, with skill and
with physical courage. There was a mayor rising above city
politics and using his platform with great skill and grace.
In essence, it was public servants who inspired our pride.
And all of us were forced to recognize that government was
not-never could be-irrelevant in a world filled with risks
and hazards almost beyond imagination.
The Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, David
Halberstam, known for his biting critiques of American policy
since the days of Vietnam, turned his attention to the heroes
of 9/11. In a small book called Firemen, published this spring,
he produced a poignant portrait of one midtown Manhattan fire
company that lost a dozen men in the World Trade Center collapse.
Social commentator David Brooks, a columnist
for The Atlantic Monthly, had this to say about government
in the magazine's September issue:
It's clearer now that we require public
protection. For that we have looked to the institutions of
central authority. The executive branch of government has
become more important, as the President conducts a war against
terror and contemplates a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. The
FBI has become more important, and the scandals plaguing it
more vexing, because suddenly we need those agents to find
people who send anthrax through the mail or who are planning
future hijackings or bombings. The Securities and Exchange
Commission has become more important, because we need strong
policing of the financial markets to keep them honest.
Brooks went on to note that young people
are looking considerably more favorably at careers in government,
notably at the CIA and the State Department.
So that is the brighter side of the picture.
People now realize that our country needs
the diplomats and the spooks, and the soldiers who are carrying
our flag in Afghanistan and other trouble spots around the
world.
They now realize that the men and women
who conduct inspections at the border are vital to our common
security, and that the FBI must have the resources needed
to detect and prevent new threats.
They may not realize that tens and tens
of thousands of other people in the federal government - the
very people George Wallace so disparaged years ago - are doing
work that is essential to our economy, our society and our
democracy.
People like you in this room.
A few weeks ago, our staff put together
a very partial list of the jobs our readers do. Although it
just scratches the surface of the federal government's vital
functions, it does begin to suggest how much we all rely on
the public sector.
You and your colleagues:
- Set and enforce
the rules governing our economic affairs;
- Grant patents
that define innovation in our economy;
- Regulate the communications
industry, the most advanced in the world;
- Monitor and regulate fair conduct in
our labor markets, and gather the information needed to
guide people in their choices of investment and job creation;
- Promote and protect our fisheries, and
our agricultural sector;
- Manage the vast expanses of land that
belong to the public;
- Explore space, and promote research to
deepen scientific knowledge;
- Discover new treatments for disease,
and promote the public health for millions of Americans;
- Maintain diplomatic and trade relations
with dozens of countries, and conduct foreign intelligence
in the interest of national security;
- And work to enhance environmental quality
for all of us today, and for future generations.
I have not mentioned in this brief accounting
the work of the Defense Department, or that of many of the
agencies that would make up the new Department of Homeland
Security. But these are functions, of course, that are as
vital as any government now performs.
So let us celebrate the public service.
And as we do so, let us also pay tribute
to a man who came to symbolize its best qualities. I speak
of David O. Cooke, who died this summer after more than four
decades of service to the American public.
During a ceremony to honor Doc Cooke two
years ago, a former Secretary of Defense said of him:
"You embody all the values and virtues
that America could hope for in a public servant: unwavering
honor, unquestioned integrity and unequaled commitment to
the nation."
I could talk about Doc's long career in
the Navy and in the Defense Department, but suffice it to
say that he earned the respect, admiration and love of hundreds
and hundreds of colleagues and associates over the course
of the years. They included some 15 Secretaries of Defense,
of whom nine gathered in a wonderful photograph taken a few
years ago in Doc's office. Fittingly, Doc is seated, with
the Secretaries of Defense flanking him. "We all work
for Doc," one once said.
Doc was not one to accept praise too readily
- he would remark that only his mother would believe it -
and so I think he might be more comfortable if we took a moment
just to listen to what he himself had to say about leadership
in today's government.
Here is Doc talking during an interview
six years ago:
You can think about an organization in
terms of its wiring diagram, or its skeletal structure or
the task skills you need to make it function the way you
want. Or you can think in terms of the people involved.
And to loosely paraphrase the apostle Paul, the greatest
of these is people.
When I get complaints, and I get a lot of them, from managers
who say that people who work for them aren't doing what
they're supposed to be doing, I always ask: 'Have you told
these people? Have you explained to them what you expect?'
Very often I find they haven't got the guidance and direction
they should have gotten.
People constitute the most important resource,
and so often we treat them like dirt.
The kinds of concerns Doc voiced during
that 1996 interview are the same concerns on the minds of
people at this conference. He knew that we must find a way
to treat people better if we are to meet the human capital
needs of the federal government.
We published those remarks in a profile
of Doc in 1996, the year he was chosen to receive the NCAC/Government
Executive Leadership Award for distinguished achievement during
a career in federal service.
Today, it is with pleasure and pride that
we are renaming this award the David O. Cooke Award for Leadership
in the Federal Service.
I can think of no better way to celebrate
the public service.
Timothy B. Clark, Publisher of
Government Executive and Fellow of the National Academy of
Public Administration, delivered these remarks September 10
at HR Transitions 2002, a conference sponsored annually by
the Academy's Center for Human Resources Management. More
than 400 government executives, human resources professionals,
line managers, and staffing specialists attended the event.
|
