Peer2Politics

It's a great paradox that the moment the United States needs government the most, we don't seem to have one anymore. As a student of public administration, like many of my generation, I was motivated by John F. Kennedy's call to public service. I "asked not what my country could do for me" and, despite my concerns about the direction of our foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s, I went to work for the Environmental Protection Agency in the late 1970s asking, "what can I do for my country?" Six months into Ronald Reagan's term, after he defined government as a problem rather than a calling, I was gone. I was not alone; many left and many who were needed never arrived. State and local governments continued to attract the best and brightest of our young people, but fewer and fewer seemed interested in working in our nation's capital. Most headed for private nonprofits and for-profits. In Washington, public service went out of fashion, replaced by the ambition-fueled revolving door.