Defending Public Service

stute executives at top publishing houses have a keen scent for blood. Like personal injury lawyers, they move in quickly when disaster strikes. The Clinton impeachment episode, for example, produced a flurry of titles from publishers seeking to capitalize on the Monica and Bill scandal.

At least one publishing house, however, took a broader view of the political carnage and set out to commission a book about the larger collateral damage inflicted upon the government and upon public servants in general. The result is a slender tome, In Praise of Public Life, written by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., and author Michael D'Orso and published earlier this year by Simon & Schuster.

As Lieberman is quick to acknowledge, the idea for the book came from the publishing house's editorial director, Alice Mayhew. He met Mayhew at the urging of his longtime friend Jack Romanos, the president of Simon & Schuster. From her Manhattan vantage point, Mayhew was alarmed by the public's growing disillusionment with Washington, reflected in declining voter turnout and gimmicky proposals, such as term limits, designed to clip the wings of elected officials.

Because Lieberman had broken party ranks in the fall of 1998 to deliver a speech on the Senate floor denouncing President Clinton's behavior as "disgraceful" and "immoral," the publishers viewed him as someone who could speak with integrity in defense of those who serve in government. Mayhew, the senator recalled, "wanted someone to write about public life and respond to the broad cynicism" with which it is now viewed.

Speaking at a recent American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research luncheon, Lieberman, who's up for re-election this year, said the request instantly struck a chord. After nearly three decades in public office, and despite occasional moments of "frustration, even anger," he said, "I feel grateful that I made the career choice I did."

But Lieberman quickly added that his sense of the pride and satisfaction to be derived from public service is not widely shared by young people today. Interns who serve in his office say that "very few" of their classmates are interested in government careers because they view the political sphere as "nasty, expensive, too partisan and [a place where] you don't have any privacy." Those are "four pretty good arguments," the Connecticut senator ruefully conceded.

Such attitudes, he added, are particularly disturbing, because other "indicators show that the student generation of today is quite interested in service," with increasing numbers choosing careers, such as teaching, that advance the welfare of others. "But not as many," he said, "are interested in going into government service, and certainly not elective service."

In addition, Lieberman pointed out, there has been "a terrible decline in voter turnout." In 1996, only 49 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, the lowest percentage in a presidential election year since 1924. Two years later, at the outset of the Clinton impeachment proceedings, turnout for the midterm congressional elections was just 36 percent, the lowest rate since 1942.

To Lieberman, the mistrust of government by the young, and the decline in voting among the population in general, signal "a low point in the American people's relationship with their government,. . . a real crisis of confidence, not just in politicians, but in the value of public life in our democracy."

His book is a defense of "the values, honor and necessity" of public service." He told his audience of government insiders that "we have to make the case that if you are concerned about the quality of education or the quality of health care, that government is a way to make it better, perhaps the most consequential way to make it better."

The stakes are high. "We need to convince more young people who want to make a difference that they should enter public life," Lieberman writes. "For the American experiment in self-government to remain vital, we need more people to serve in that government and to lead public lives."

Lieberman argues that to regain the confidence of everday citizens government officials must lead by example, putting aside excessive partisanship and engaging in honest compromises to achieve progress. The increasing use of the courts and congressionally authorized investigations for partisan purposes "demeans both of those great institutions," he warned.

But citizens also must become more active in demanding higher standards, he says: "If, for example, the dizzying and dismaying amount of money it takes to run for Congress or the presidency today seems outrageous and corrupting to you, as it does to me, demand that the rules for raising and spending money on political campaigns be reformed."

In the end, the honor and importance of public service will be restored only "if more good people get involved," Lieberman concluded. Whether they will choose to do so "is an open question," he said. "It's in the balance."

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.