“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” were the words of Russell Vought at an event for his think tank, the Centre for Renewing America.
He went on to say: “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. ... We want to put them in trauma.”
Vought is now the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, the agency implementing the agenda of the American president for public services and their budgets.
His work, along with the efforts of Elon Musk, aims for a radical reduction in the scale of the American state. They also want to change the direction of the state; all public servants should reflect the political will of their elected leader.
Concepts such as the independence of regulators or the impartiality of civil servants are now challenged.
Conceived under the banner of eliminating waste, corruption and “wokeness”, these fundamental changes do not attract the attention of tariffs and wars.
They could, however, prove to be as important.
This is due to their impact on the economy and welfare of our world. Effects will range from the regulation of financial systems to weather forecasting. In these and in many other areas, American public services make a fundamental global contribution.
Cultural changes also tend to be exported. Shifts in the political equilibrium, on the other side of the Atlantic, matter.
Michael Lewis is the leading chronicler of these changes in American economics and commerce. Liar’s Poker, his first book, was the definitive account of Wall Street excesses in the 1980s.
It was the first in a series of works brilliantly examining the inner workings of capitalism with great storytelling and the identification of compelling figures involved in big changes.
Recent books have changed focus, tilting from an emphasis on the market to the state. He has made a positive case for the role of government and described the self-harm caused by attacking public services and their bureaucracies.
The best example of this was The Fifth Risk, a convincing argument of how national risks were increased by weakening the departments of energy, agriculture and commerce in the first Trump administration.
In this, and following works, a bureaucrat is never a pejorative term and is never faceless.
The positive consideration of the role of the state is continued with Who is Government?. This collection of essays, originally published by different writers in the Washington Post, considers the work of individual public servants, their lives and impact on American life.
Lewis correctly contends that “Our Government – as opposed to our elected officials – had no talent for telling its own story".
This helped to create a familiar stereotype, of the “nine-to-fiver living off the taxpayer who adds no value and has no energy and somehow still subverts the public will”. The author aims to tackle this caricature.
These are vivid stories, identifying unusual and low-profile work requiring great levels of commitment and expertise.
Examples include the work of the Bureau of Mines to stop the collapse of mines, research into the start of the universe by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the calculation of inflation by the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
The work of institutions is explained through the lives and careers of public servants. This is where the sparkle happens, no chapter is a dry essay.
Ronald Walters of the National Cemetery Administration is my favourite character. The author, Casey Cep, explains how this organisation annually buries 140,000 veterans and family members and commemorates nearly four million other veterans.
Walters ensures that every cemetery is pristinely maintained, with the right flags flying and that all headstones are correctly presented. His leadership and passion for public service is beautifully described.
[ 50 Irish graves to visit before you dieOpens in new window ]
A similar approach describes the work of a cybercrime expert in the Inland Revenue Service and a paralegal in the department of justice.
These stories refute the suggestion that the only role of public services is to correct markets. This is an excessively negative framing of the state. Public services create good, even great, outcomes for society as opposed to merely intervening in free markets.
An unregulated economy will not, for example, lead to the the building of museums. Reflecting on our past, however, has a value that is greater than only stepping into spaces in which free markets do not function.
Lewis is the author of two essays in this collection. However, a conclusion by him, identifying the common themes in these stories, would have been of great benefit. It could have helped the reader better appreciate the role of the state and its necessity in modern economies and societies.
Who is Government? is a good companion to the “pro-public service” sequence of books by Lewis. An unfamiliar reader should begin with The Fifth Risk. Devotees will be reminded, by this book, why his work is so important.
Paschal Donohoe is the Minister for Finance and President of the Eurogroup.
