There Is No Such Thing As "The Government"

People often complain about 'the Government" as though there were one big government.  But the truth is, there are many governments.  Not just in the world, but inside the United States.  Beyond the Federal (national/USA) government, every State has a government and every city and town has a government, and on and on.  

From the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:

"In the most recent Census of Governments, which was conducted in 2022, the Census Bureau counted 90,837 governments in the U.S. In addition to the federal government, the 50 state governments and the government of Washington, D.C., there were 3,031 county governments, 35,705 township and municipal governments, 12,546 independent school districts and 39,555 other special-purpose local governments."

We have governments to do the collective things we need to do, that the private sector won't or can't do or shouldn't do.  And in a democracy, the people have a voice in who gets to run the governments. 

The idea that there are over 90,000 governments in the United States is not something that most USians seem to know.  Instead the rail against "The Government" not even distinguishing between those who are politicians and those civil servants who actually keep the many governmental agencies running.  Instead people, upset with whatever agency they think has done them wrong,  generalize from the specific government agency to the "Government."

On the other hand, when someone is frustrated with Home Depot or Delta Airlines or ATT, they call out that specific company by name.  They don't vilify "Business" or "Capitalism" in general.  

All that's an intro to some comments about Michael Lewis' book Who Is Government? which is my bookclub's selection for this month.  

He starts out talking about how the Obama administration had set up a transition team to brief the new administration after the election.  Whether Trump or Clinton won, they had prepared documentation and presentations to bring the incoming administration up to speed as quickly as possible.  

"A thousand or so Obama officials were waiting for them, along with briefings that had taken them six months to prepare.  But then, days after the election, Trump simply fired the 500 or so people on his transition team.  "Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves."  he told a perplexed Chris Christie, who assembled the team.  

Then he appointed Rick Perry as his secretary of energy.  In his own presidential campaign, Perry had called for the Energy Department's elimination - and was forced, at his Senate confirmation hearings, to acknowledge that he'd had no real idea of what went on inside the Energy Department, but now that he'd spent a few days looking into it, he really did not want to eliminate it.  At that moment, it became clear that none of these people, newly in charge of the United States government, had the faintest idea what it did.  (The Energy Department, among its other critical functions, manages our nuclear weapons.)  And they weren't alone!  I didn't really have any clue what went on inside the department either.  People capable of ruining panel discussions and dinner parties with their steady stream of opinions about American politics were totally flummoxed by the simplest questions about American government.  Questions like:  What do all those civil servants do all day inside the Agriculture Department?  (They preserve rural America from extinction, among other things.)"

So Lewis decided to take advantage of the Obama transition team to find out and spent time at the Energy Department and the Commerce Department learning, as a journalist, about what they did and interviewing employees about their jobs.  He eventually discovered an organization that gave awards to outstanding Federal Employees.  

The book highlights eight of those remarkable employees.  Two of the chapters are written by Lewis and the other six by different authors.  

The stories will take most people by surprise.  The two by Lewis are so well written, and so interesting, that I encourage people to find this book and read it.  It will give you an entirely new sense of what government does.  

Of course, I acknowledge that not all Federal employees are as brilliant and dedicated as the eight in the book.  But few resemble the stereotype of lazy wasteful employees either. In the 1980-81 school year I had a Fellowship at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)  My boss at Oceanic and Atmospheric Services, set up a series of meetings for me with the heads of the key agencies he coordinated.  I got picked up by a car and driven to meet with the Director of the Weather Service, for example, and got briefed on all they did.  So I can understand how Lewis felt taking in all this information.  

My unit was made up of men (mostly) who were natural scientists - with advanced degrees in meteorology, oceanography, and such subjects.  I did ask my boss why he'd hired me - a social scientist and not a natural scientist.  His answer, "Because you're a social scientist."  And in my unit, they were all 20 to 30 years older than I was.  And I learned a lot from them.  A key lesson was that these men had served in NOAA for many years and in many parts of the United States.  (I wasn't the only one who had lived in Alaska.).  And what they brought to policy making was both personal expertise but also a network of people around the US who worked for NOAA.  People they had worked with at some point in their careers.  People they could call and immediately find out what was going on at any point.  

So, do find a copy of this book.  It's very readable and inspiring.  And also somewhat depressing knowing that some of these agencies have been gutted by the Trump Administration.  But you'll have ammunition for when you talk to or write your members of Congress - both House members and Senate members.  

If you read this book, you'll meet a man who spent over a decade figuring out how to lower the death rate of coal miners by making roof collapses far less likely;  the man in charge of National Cemeteries;  a woman who seeks out signs of life beyond our universe; and another woman who specializes in finding cures for raw diseases.