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The Canary: Michael Lewis on Chris Mark of the Department of Labor
This is a long story. I’m on a phone, which won’t let me add a “share” link. I can do that later.
WHO IS GOVERNMENT?
A SERIES FROM POST OPINIONS
THE CANARY
Michael Lewis on Chris Mark of the Department of Labor
Christopher Mark inside the Phillips-Sprague Mine, also known as the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, in July in Beckley, W.Va. (Kent Nishimura for The Washington Post)
By Michael Lewis
September 3, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Each spring, the most interesting organization that no one’s ever heard of collects nominations for the most important awards that most people will never know were handed out. The organization, called the Partnership for Public Service, created the awards, called the Sammies, in 2002 to call out extraordinary deeds inside the federal government. Founded the year before by an entrepreneur named Samuel Heyman, it set out to attract talented and unusual people to the federal workforce. One big reason talented and unusual people did not gravitate to the government was that the government was often a miserable place for talented and unusual people to work. Civil servants who screwed up were dragged before Congress and into the news. Civil servants who did something great, no one said a word about. There was thus little incentive to do something great, and a lot of incentive to hide. The awards were meant to correct that problem. “There’s no culture of recognition in government,” said Max Stier, whom Heyman hired to run the Partnership. “We wanted to create a culture of recognition.”
This was trickier than they first imagined it would be. Basically no one came forward on their own: Civil servants appeared to lack the ability to be recognized. Stier was reduced to calling up the 15 Cabinet secretaries and begging them to look around and see whether any of their underlings had done anything worth mentioning. Nominations trickled in; some awards got handed out. A pair of FBI agents cracked the cold case of the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and split one of the prizes. Another went to a doctor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who designed and ran a program that delivered a billion vaccinations and eradicated polio in India. A third was given to a man inside the Energy Department who had been sent to a massive nuclear waste dump outside Denver, containing enough radioactive gunk to fill 90 miles of railroad cars, and told to clean it up. He finished the project $30 billion under budget and 60 years ahead of schedule — and turned the dump into a park. … All these people had done astonishing things. None had much to say about them. The Partnership called the Colorado guy to see if he wanted to explain the miracle he’d performed. “I just managed the project,” he said. End of story. No story.
{snip}
Each year, I finish reading the list of nominees with the same lingering feeling of futility: Democratic government isn’t really designed to highlight the individual achievement of unelected officials. Even the people who win the award will receive it and hustle back to their jobs before anyone has a chance to get to know them — and before elected officials ask for their spotlight back. Even their nominations feel modest. Never I did this, but we did this. Never look at me, but look at this work! Never a word about who these people are or where they come from or why it ever occurred to them to bother. Nothing to change the picture in your head when you hear the word “bureaucrat.” Nothing to arouse curiosity about them, or lead you to ask what they do, or why they do it.
They were the carrots in the third-grade play. Our elected officials — the kids who bludgeon the teachers for attention and wind up cast as the play’s lead — use them for their own narrow purposes. They take credit for the good they do. They blame them when things go wrong. The rest of us encourage this dubious behavior. We never ask: Why am I spending another minute of my life reading about and yapping about Donald Trump or Kamala Harris when I know nothing about the 2 million or so federal employees and their possibly lifesaving work that whoever is president will be expected to nurture, or at least not screw up? Even the Partnership seems to sense the futility in trying to present civil servants as characters with voices needing to be heard.
{snip}
Two members of a rescue team return from the Wilberg Mine in central Utah on Dec. 21, 1984, after a fire and tunnel collapse in which 27 people died. (J. Brandlon/AP)
{snip}
On Sept. 11, at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center, Christopher Mark will receive the Sammies Award for Career Achievement.
A SERIES FROM POST OPINIONS
THE CANARY
Michael Lewis on Chris Mark of the Department of Labor
Christopher Mark inside the Phillips-Sprague Mine, also known as the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, in July in Beckley, W.Va. (Kent Nishimura for The Washington Post)
By Michael Lewis
September 3, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Each spring, the most interesting organization that no one’s ever heard of collects nominations for the most important awards that most people will never know were handed out. The organization, called the Partnership for Public Service, created the awards, called the Sammies, in 2002 to call out extraordinary deeds inside the federal government. Founded the year before by an entrepreneur named Samuel Heyman, it set out to attract talented and unusual people to the federal workforce. One big reason talented and unusual people did not gravitate to the government was that the government was often a miserable place for talented and unusual people to work. Civil servants who screwed up were dragged before Congress and into the news. Civil servants who did something great, no one said a word about. There was thus little incentive to do something great, and a lot of incentive to hide. The awards were meant to correct that problem. “There’s no culture of recognition in government,” said Max Stier, whom Heyman hired to run the Partnership. “We wanted to create a culture of recognition.”
This was trickier than they first imagined it would be. Basically no one came forward on their own: Civil servants appeared to lack the ability to be recognized. Stier was reduced to calling up the 15 Cabinet secretaries and begging them to look around and see whether any of their underlings had done anything worth mentioning. Nominations trickled in; some awards got handed out. A pair of FBI agents cracked the cold case of the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and split one of the prizes. Another went to a doctor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who designed and ran a program that delivered a billion vaccinations and eradicated polio in India. A third was given to a man inside the Energy Department who had been sent to a massive nuclear waste dump outside Denver, containing enough radioactive gunk to fill 90 miles of railroad cars, and told to clean it up. He finished the project $30 billion under budget and 60 years ahead of schedule — and turned the dump into a park. … All these people had done astonishing things. None had much to say about them. The Partnership called the Colorado guy to see if he wanted to explain the miracle he’d performed. “I just managed the project,” he said. End of story. No story.
{snip}
Each year, I finish reading the list of nominees with the same lingering feeling of futility: Democratic government isn’t really designed to highlight the individual achievement of unelected officials. Even the people who win the award will receive it and hustle back to their jobs before anyone has a chance to get to know them — and before elected officials ask for their spotlight back. Even their nominations feel modest. Never I did this, but we did this. Never look at me, but look at this work! Never a word about who these people are or where they come from or why it ever occurred to them to bother. Nothing to change the picture in your head when you hear the word “bureaucrat.” Nothing to arouse curiosity about them, or lead you to ask what they do, or why they do it.
They were the carrots in the third-grade play. Our elected officials — the kids who bludgeon the teachers for attention and wind up cast as the play’s lead — use them for their own narrow purposes. They take credit for the good they do. They blame them when things go wrong. The rest of us encourage this dubious behavior. We never ask: Why am I spending another minute of my life reading about and yapping about Donald Trump or Kamala Harris when I know nothing about the 2 million or so federal employees and their possibly lifesaving work that whoever is president will be expected to nurture, or at least not screw up? Even the Partnership seems to sense the futility in trying to present civil servants as characters with voices needing to be heard.
{snip}
Two members of a rescue team return from the Wilberg Mine in central Utah on Dec. 21, 1984, after a fire and tunnel collapse in which 27 people died. (J. Brandlon/AP)
{snip}
On Sept. 11, at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center, Christopher Mark will receive the Sammies Award for Career Achievement.
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