Time to show some respect for people laboring in thankless government jobs
I was in a discussion the other day about all the national security officials leaving the Obama Administration. One person snidely said that the rats were leaving the ship. My friend and CNAS colleague Bob Killebrew responded thusly. By Col. Robert Killebrew (USA, Ret.) Best Defense guest columnist In my own view, anybody who puts ...
I was in a discussion the other day about all the national security officials leaving the Obama Administration. One person snidely said that the rats were leaving the ship. My friend and CNAS colleague Bob Killebrew responded thusly.
I was in a discussion the other day about all the national security officials leaving the Obama Administration. One person snidely said that the rats were leaving the ship. My friend and CNAS colleague Bob Killebrew responded thusly.
By Col. Robert Killebrew (USA, Ret.)
Best Defense guest columnist
In my own view, anybody who puts up with life in that hothouse for two weeks, even, deserves better than that kind of shot.
I once was considered for an appointed post, but thankfully came out second-best to an enormously talented person who took a pay cut to serve her country. I later visited her in the office that would have been mine; she was sitting at a nicked-up wooden desk in an office that had a bunch of gray safes and old office furniture; I would not have been surprised to see a naked lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling. I left thankful that the cup had passed from me and with great sympathy for her and all the people — many of them military officers — who worked with her. She put in a little less than two years, did a superb job under very trying circumstances, and never complained.
The person I’m describing is not the only example; I was in the Pentagon this week and was again struck by the caliber of people in appointed posts who can quit anytime, but instead show up at 7:00 a.m. and grind away every day at both the petty and the grave tasks of American policy. I know there is the occasional dirtbag, and the occasional career-seeker padding his or her resume, but on the whole these are people working below their pay scale because they’ve been asked to do so, putting their own careers and families on hold. I know it’s stylish to denigrate government, from the President to the postman, but Bill Lynn and others below and above him deserve our respect.
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