The term "public service" has lost meaning for Americans

Keith Barret
ePluribus Media

<...today I listened to Lurita Doan give evidence during the U.S. Congressional hearing on the General Services Administration and I was both shocked and angry by what I heard: truly shocked, but most of all angry, because Ms. Doan represented a critical part of what I have done in my life, and she shamed me and shamed many of those like me.

Ms. Doan is a person from the private sector who has been brought into government to head up an agency, an agency that by all accounts was inefficient and failing in many regards.
I listened to her opening statement and immediately empathised with her. She had to shift a huge bureaucracy and the resentful doggedness of others for whom she had oversight. She used all her private sector skills to set specific, challenging goals and drove to achieve them with a clear-sighted and forceful determination. Only those who have faced such a task will know the enormous courage and steel that is required to get an inert and unresponsive public sector to move in the direction that one sets for it.

It was when she started to respond to questions that I became concerned. It was a concern that turned into the real anger that has left me with a sense of disgust.>

<...So just what was it that was dreadful to watch on C-Span? It was her attitude. She displayed all the excellent marks of a confident manager. She was forceful and clear and able to elucidate her goals. With this, I have no quarrel. Rightly or wrongly, she clearly felt that she was being made a political target, and she was ready and able to use her skills to address this concern. She did so well and again I have no quarrel with her doing so.

What I objected to was the basic assumption that she was talking among equals, strange though such a sentiment may sound to all those who simply take at superficial face value the declaration that we are all equal. So I need to explain what I mean.

At one stage, she expressed the desire to move on from the current anxieties of the Committee and for them together to work towards the necessary goals of her Department. The problem was she said it as if she was addressing her senior management team, not members of Congress representing the people of a great nation.

She was never rude but was frequently combative. Combative in the way that you are when a deal is being negotiated between two equal parties. She was never disrespectful but was frequently without respect. She demanded to be heard as an equal but failed to understand one fundamental fact of being a public servant. You are the servant of the public, not its equal. If you don't understand that and can't relate to that when talking to the representatives of the people, you do not understand the Constitution.>

http://www.epluribusmedia.org/columns/2007/04072007_public_servants.html

...only special interests who can pay are served

What a quaint idea.

When a person doesn't understand the governing principles, they often behave in such a manner. Such is the case with this person.

How appalling that our government has people in it who don't even understand the basic principles of our (supposed) democracy.



Cher