In recent months I have had the opportunity to interact with state level public administrators (Bureaucrats, if you will--I hesitate to use the term due to its pejorative connotation.), legislative aides to my state senator and state representative, and staff of a statewide professional association. It has been an interesting experience. Sometimes I think I am back in college working on a group assignment drafting a statement of public policy. In those days, the work group consisted of equally youthful types with limited life experience and a brevity of both knowledge and expertise relative to the manner at hand. That is why we were in school; we were trying to address the latter so that we could proceed to accumulating the former. Forty years later, it feels a lot like doing more of the same thing under different circumstances. The objective is not to favorably impress a teacher, but to effect public policy where the implementation of said policy and professional practice impact upon the real life situation of our fellow citizens. I am okay with this feeling; it is just a feeling evoked by an earlier experience and a feeling where the real life consequences are not readily evident on an emotional level. That will come with implementation and feedback from those directly affected by the policy under consideration. Hopefully, that will be the future of these efforts.

There has been another dimension to this experience which is much more unsettling and for which I can not identify or rationalize a more satisfying outcome. This dimension arises out of the mutual disdain that I perceive to be present between state legislative folks (elected officials and their staff) and public administrators (civil servants). The terms "politician" and "bureaucrat" are used in a pejorative sense by these folks; the motivation of the "other" is viewed completely in self-serving terms. One is protecting the vote (that is, favor with their constituency); the other is protecting their job. This conceptualization of the "other" seems to eliminate any willingness or ability to perceive of the "other" in any alternative, and certainly any more favorably, terms. This absolutist thinking rules out any consideration of a range of possible strategies that might move a state level policy forward. The sole strategy seen as worthwhile and thereby employed by legislative folks is to garner numbers in favor of their position with little consideration of the value of those allies, where the primary requirement is the capacity is for loud speech. On the other hand, the strategy employed by public administrators is to parse language in such a way that its intent is to mislead the other party and to obfuscate the issue at hand, by rendering the matter either a moving target or a series of targets.

This was never more clear than when I asked during the course of a conference telephone call discussing strategy, "Can't we just appeal to folks to do the right thing?" The response was a resounding "No!" (Folks were apparently polite enough to not point out my naivete.) There was an acknowledgement that the position I and my allies advocated was consistent with (1)the intent of the Legislature, (2)the spirit, if not the, literal wording of State law, and (3)Federal policy. Yet such a claim to legitimacy was seen as tactically worthless. These two parties have apparently become so adept at their usual and customary battle strategies that these respective tactics have become the nuclear option for the respective camps. The nuclear option may have become the only strategy that each camp is willing to even consider, much less employ, in working with the other in they go about the people's work. These very limited arsenals concretize existing stereotypes, perpetuate errors in thinking, and inhibit creative problem solving. Maybe it is time for all of us to go back to school to learn the knowledge and expertise over which one is expected to have acquired a reasonable facility in order to be promoted from kindergarten to first grade.

This experience has given me a perspective from which to view Governor Christie's Bridgegate and Governor Walker's Campaign John Doe investigations. C and W's alleged illicit behaviors may not be substantively different from business as usual within these contexts. ("That is just how things are done around here.") The only differences are matters of degree, the size of the fiscal impact, or the numbers of the public impacted.

As the issue, which has currently engaged my passion, proceeds forward, I will refuse to collaborate with any party that resorts to a nuclear option in pursuit of its desired goal. A statement made by Grahm Shotwell (a character in the novel Driftless by David Rhodes) comes to mind: "...it was better to be wronged and do nothing about it than to do something wrong and regret it. A person could live with one but not the other." I am responsible only for my own sense of right and wrong, the comfort I take in the former, and the regret I bear with the latter.