The Untold Story of Public Service

There are Heroes Among Us

In this week’s fusillade of crazy headlines, here’s one we shouldn’t forget: Layoffs of 10,000 Government Health Workers Begin.

This is . . . not good. What’s worse is how these civil servants are finding out their years of service have come to an end—-with deactivated badges when they try to open the building door.

This isn’t new of course. It’s been happening across federal agencies since the new administration took office. Who knows what headlines await us next week?

It takes me back to 2008 when I first arrived in DC to lead TNC. At the time, I was surprised to learn how talented and productive federal employees were. I’m embarrassed now to admit that I had no idea how important these people are. When you’re in the private sector, like I was, you tend to think no one can be as good as your team. Maybe you even believe some of the tired myths about government workers.

But my direct experience proved such views wrong. Time after time, I would meet and work closely with staffers on the Hill, the Department of Interior, the EPA, CEQ, NOAA, etc. The people I worked with were smart, hardworking, experts in their fields, responsible for important work, and above all, dedicated to the public. These civil servants were doing things that were absolutely vital and that only the government was willing to do.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Instead, consider the views of arguably America’s most successful nonfiction writer, Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, Liar’s Poker).

Lewis’ new book, Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service, is a collection of essays by him and others that profile unsung heroes in the ranks of government workers. The book also spotlights the vital work they do.

Lewis has great timing. His book reminds readers why we need a strong and ably-staffed federal government. Here are some of the profiles in the book.

• Lewis recounts how Christopher Mark at the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration heroically ends coal miner deaths from roof collapses. (Did you know that over the prior century some 50,000 coal miners died because of mine roof collapses in the US?) Mark figures out why the accidents keep happening, how to prevent them, and how to get the regulatory power his agency needs to ensure that mines are operated safely. As Lewis points out, the private sector could have done this on their own—i.e., they could have saved the lives of their own employees—but never did so. We needed government agencies staffed by leaders like Mark to get this job done.

• Novelist Geraldine Brooks (author of great novels like Horse and Pulitzer Prize winner March) tells the story of Jared Koopman, the leader of an IRS cybercrime team who rescued 23 children from rape and abuse, seized a quarter million child abuse videos, arrested 370 alleged pedophiles, and led the largest-ever seizure of cryptocurrency that had been headed to Hamas and al Quaeda.

• Dave Eggers (author of What’s the What and Pulitzer winner A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) follows “The Searchers,” a NASA team that’s close to telling us whether life is possible beyond Planet Earth and if so, where.

• Instead of profiling a single hero, John Lanchester (author of The Wall and The Debt to Pleasure) explains the painstaking and incredibly complicated task of compiling the Consumer Price Index, which is integral to accurately measuring inflation. His fundamental point is that for our democracy to work, we need lots of accurate data. It’s easy to miss how important that data is until we don’t have it. . . which could now be right around the corner.

• To close the book, Lewis provides a moving portrayal of Heather Stone at the FDA, who leads efforts to repurpose drugs to cure deadly but very rare diseases that no private sector player would ever invest in because the market is—by definition—small. Her’s is a lonely effort, but that doesn’t stop her from having huge successes (i.e., lives saved). Stone is as heroic as any figure Lewis has ever written about. I hope she still has her job. But after this week, who knows?

Given the timing, you might think Lewis and team wrote the book as a harried response to the reckless and haphazard downsizing efforts underway. But no. These essays were first published in the Washington Post roughly a year ago. The writers couldn’t have known the fate of our government workers. They simply recognized that they deserve more recognition, respect, and gratitude for expertly achieving what the private sector never would.

Lewis wrote another book on this topic back in 2018 during the last Trump administration. The Fifth Risk is a frightening exposé of how little the administration knew or understood about what federal agencies do and the dangers of imposing short-term solutions on long-term challenges. Lewis deploys his usual wit, but as a reader you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry.

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I’ve been talking to friends about the dangerous disregard for the public sector on display right now. Many of them are surprised at how favorably I speak about my experience with federal employees. They usually don’t have any first-hand experience in DC, and they seem inclined to believe some of the DOGE narratives about massive waste and fraud—-mostly unsupported by any evidence—as well as stereotypes about government bureaucrats. I tell them I have no objection to good-faith efforts to improve productivity or cut unnecessary costs. But what’s happening here is disrespectful, reckless, and dangerous. That we should all deplore.

People ask me for suggestions about what they can do to address challenges like this. The key task will be to elect responsible leaders. But in the meantime, one good way to engage is to become better informed. You can start by reading these timely books and spreading the word. Our federal employees deserve more respect than they get. It’s the widespread belief in false stereotypes that allows this harm to occur.

Onward,