Transcript
MR. LIGHT: Good morning. I am Paul Light. I'm vice president and director of governmental studies here at the Brookings Institution. We are here today to talk about trust in government. But, before we do, I want to thank the group of people involved in this effort. On the research side, Judith Labiner, the deputy director of the Center for Public Service; Cal Mackenzie, senior advisor to the presidential appointee initiative and the Volcker Commission; and Mary McIntosh, who is vice president at Princeton Survey Research. On the outreach side: Erin Murphy, Gina Russo and Anna Gallagher, who put together this event and maintain our efforts to get this work out. And from the Volcker Commission: Hannah Sistare, who is the executive director; Carol Plowfield, who is the deputy director of the Presidential Appointee Initiative, Bill Fanaras and Michael Hafken, who are all working hard on our research activities; and of course Paul Volcker, without whom there would be no Volcker Commission — although he doesn't like me to call it the Volcker Commission. It's the National Commission on the Public Service. We have Connie Horner, who is a commission member, here.
Let me start by noting that we released some data on presidential appointees last week, noting that favorability in presidential appointees has fallen back about halfway to its pre-September 11th levels. Perceptions about why presidential appointees serve is completely back to where it was before September 11th. In July of 2001, 35 percent of Americans said appointees are motivated primarily by the chance to serve their country; and 54 percent said they were primarily motivated by advancing their careers. In October the numbers had changed almost to the opposite. Forty-seven percent in October said appointees serve for the country; and 37 percent said career. By May it was back to 32 percent country, 51 percent career. Americans have turned to their basic sense that appointees are motivated by personal self-interests more than service to the country.
We also noted that favorability towards Colin Powell was extraordinarily high: 85 percent of Americans have a very or somewhat favorable view of the secretary of State; and Secretary Rumsfeld was 70 percent. I believe that favorability towards Powell and Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney, actually has kept the numbers on presidential appointees from falling even further.
Today's event is about both continuity and change. Cal is going to talk about change and what's happened on the numbers on trust in government. Let me talk briefly about continuity.
Undergirding trust in government throughout this extraordinary period of surge and now dissipation has been a persistent sub-theme of considerable focus and interest to the Volcker Commission. From July of 2001 to today, Americans have never changed in their view of what motivates federal employees. They thought federal employees were in government for the money, the security and the benefits last July; they thought that last October; and they think it now. The figures didn't change by more than one or two points over the entire year. Americans just don't think federal government employees are motivated by the right things.
Americans also never changed in their views of government inefficiency. Before September 11th they thought the bigger problem in government was inefficiency, not the wrong priorities. After September 11th, in October, they thought that; and they still think that now. Roughly two out of three Americans think that the bigger problem in government is inefficiency, not the wrong priorities.
It's important to note that this is not what federal employees themselves say brings them to work each day. Many federal employees, but not all, tell us that they come to work for the chance to accomplish something worthwhile; the opportunity to work with other people, the common good, and the nature of the work itself. But Americans don't believe it, and that's a serious issue in terms of getting young people to take an interest in federal government careers.
The influentials in a young person's life — the parents and the teachers — their attitudes towards the federal government, their perception that this is a place you go for security and safety and job benefits and pay, undermine the attempt to motivate and recruit young Americans whose primary motivations are the chance to accomplish something worthwhile, the nature of the work, the chance to acquire and learn new skills.
The persistent trust of big government in these data is part of the American character. It acts as a weight against moments of great passion for action. So this notion that Americans don't trust government is not altogether unhealthy. It tends to pull government back down after sudden surges, like the ones we saw last fall. The question for me is not so much why trust in government is coming down, but to remember why it went up so dramatically. And the events of September 11th, the dramatic leadership and assertion and strength of George Bush and several key members of his Cabinet pulled trust in government up. But what goes up ultimately comes down by varying rates, as Cal will talk about.
Finally, at some level, the distrust in government can be essential for a well-functioning democracy. Americans love what their public servants do, but are always suspicious about what brings them into office. And perhaps that's good at some level. I could argue that it's gone just much too far. And we see that one of the most important findings for the Volcker Commission and Cal and Judy's report is that trust in federal government workers — favorability towards federal government workers — is now back where it was before September 11th. Appointees have remained in the middle. Cheney and Bush have remained closer to where they were immediately after October, but government employees are back to where they were.
And now we are back to Cal Mackenzie, who has been a steadfast and loyal friend of the Presidential Appointee Initiative, one of our country's top thinkers about what to do about the presidential appointments process and trust in government. He was the staff director of a National Academy of Public Administration study on trust in government which had as its chair Paul Volcker. You take credit for the surge? I don't — (laughter). This was a report that was released a couple of years ago. We'll let Cal start off and talk a little bit about the survey, and then Paul Volcker will make some comments. And then we'll take questions from the audience. Cal?
MR. MACKENZIE: Thank you, Paul. You all have the data in front of you, and I won't repeat all of that. Let me just see if I can wrap a little context around it. Measuring trust in government has been a cottage industry in America for a long time. It's a matter of great interest here, because it's a matter of great importance here. A government that is trusted and supported by its people has capabilities that don't exist when the opposite is true. When the government is trusted, it has broad latitude to take bold action; when leaders lead, they can do so with some faith that the American people will follow them along. On the other hand, when trust in government is low, then everything gets more difficult: there is resistance to policy change. Everything is a harder sell for leaders in government. So the level of trust in government matters very substantially in terms of what the instant capabilities of government are at any point in time. And at a time when this country faces the kinds of very significant challenges that we are all familiar with today, it is an especially important issue.
The trend over the last four decades, and measurements in trust in government, survey measurements of trust in government, really begin in the 1950s. So we have a lot of data that goes back that far. And the trend we have seen over time has been a kind of high point in the early 1960s, before Vietnam, before Watergate, when on average around three quarters of the American people said they trusted the government in Washington to do what was right, just about always or most of the time. That began to drop in the mid 1960s, and with a slight sawtooth pattern it dropped significantly over the next couple of decades down into the 1990s, where most of the time fewer than 30 percent of the American people were willing to express that level of trust in government.
When we — when CPS did a survey in July of 2001 and asked this same question, we found that 29 percent of the American people expressed that level of trust in government. So it was quite stunning to see how much the support measures spiked upward after September 11th. And when we did a survey again in the month that followed September 11th, the trust index went up from what had been 29 percent in July to 57 percent in October of 2001. And this suggested perhaps there was a silver lining to the dark cloud of September 11th, that maybe this was one of those cathartic moments in history when the people do have some sense of what their government does and the important role it plays in their lives and in the world, and maybe establish a bond of faith that hadn't been there before, or at least had been rent for decades preceding that. And when the government responded to the events of September 11th with some renewed vigor, perhaps we could suggest that this was a result of this renewed support and trust it was getting.
The question of course was, Would it last? And so we went back in the field this month to see what was going on in terms of expressions of trust in government, and found unfortunately, but I think not unexpectedly, that the high levels we had seen after September 11th had begun to drop back — had dropped back in some significant ways.
What seems to have happened was that the long-term forces in our politics and our society that had been driving trust in government downward over the previous decades, had taken a short recess after September 11th. But we are still there, we are still wrong, still prevailed, and the events of September 11th were only a brief respite from all of it. So trust in government in our most recent surveys, as you can see from the data in front of you, has dropped back not quite to its pre-September 11th levels, but back to around 40 percent from its post-September 11th high of 57 percent.
We noted last October that the increase in public trust in government closely tracked the much higher favorability ratings we were seeing for people in government — for elected officials, for career civil servants, for presidential appointees, but most notably for the named individuals in the survey, for the president and the vice president. And we looked again at those numbers in the most recent survey. What we have seen is a dropping back for elected officials, a dropping back for presidential appointees, a dropping back for federal workers — not quite to their pre-September 11th levels in some cases, but back fairly close to those. But a consistently high favorability rating for President Bush, Vice President Cheney and, though we hadn't measured them before — we did in this survey — for Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary Powell. The president and vice president dropped back a little from their post-September 11th high, but nowhere near where they were before September 11th. And, as Paul suggested, that certainly supports the argument that overall trust in government would be even lower now than it is in our most recent measure, were it not for the favorability ratings received by these most visible figures in the federal government in Washington, that the high levels of favorability for President Bush and Vice President Cheney and the two Cabinet secretaries may in fact be holding up trust in government, because for some Americans there's reason to believe they are the surrogate that comes to mind when people are asked what they think about what's going on in Washington and what their leaders are doing.
Our statistical analysis of the data in this most recent survey — and we went back and compared it with a survey that had been done by Princeton Survey Research Associates in October of 1997 — to try to sort of surgically cut out what are the most important factors in determining levels of trust in government. And in October of 1997 it seemed to us that the most important factor was public assessments of government performance. If you thought the government performed well, your level of trust was higher. And the reverse was if you thought government performed badly your level of trust was lower. That seemed to be the most important correlate in those data.
In our more recent data we see a change taking place. And here it seems that the most important correlate is not assessments of the performance of government but assessments of the people in government, favorability ratings of the people in government, suggesting now that in at least the current context that how the American people feel about their leaders and the people who run the government in Washington has the most important effect on their level of trust in government. This I think is a significant finding, and it's important for a lot of reasons, but not least of which it's important because this is the focus of the new National Commission on the Public Service, which is looking at ways to increase public perceptions of what people in government are doing and how well they are doing it, to look at ways to get the best people possible in government, and to look at ways to get them the kind of operating context and operating set of procedures that will allow them to perform effectively for the American people. What we are seeing most clearly in this most recent survey is that all of that matters. If we believe that people should trust their government in some significant measure for government to perform effectively, it seems clear that they better feel good about the people in government and the operating capabilities of those people. And that's the agenda of the National Commission on the Public Service, the leader of whom, Paul Volcker, is sitting on my right.
Paul?
MR. VOLCKER: I will be brief. Sometimes I think I am in charge of lost causes. But I don't want to make this a lost cause. We have got to change that cycle. But I do have a sense where — and kind of advice in recent years where trust in government for a variety of reasons has gone down. We have gone from a traditional healthy skepticism to a kind of pervasive cynicism, which in turn affects the morale of people in government, affects who you can get in government, affects their performance. And the more doubts there are about people in government and performance, the more there's grounds for the lack of trust and cynicism in government — a kind of maligned cycle that we have to break out of.
And I think from the standpoint of those of us who have been concerned about this for some time, and Paul Light's inspiration, we are encouraged to have a new crack at it in the form of a commission. We have got to find some way to deal with this maligned cycle and make it a benign cycle. And I don't think we are going to do it just by telling people they ought to have trust in government. We have got to do things that actually inspire more trust in government. And what can we do to improve the efficiency and effectiveness and demonstrable worth of government? And that's what we are going to be worrying about in terms of both kinds of nuts and bolts, in terms of how we recruit better people, how we stimulate them, how we train them, how they get enough resources and so forth. But I begin wondering about some larger issues of how the government is organized, and I want to encourage the commission to think big rather than small in terms of some larger organizational issues to bring government up to date in terms of the kind of complexities and technical challenges that we face today that perhaps Herbert Hoover didn't face when he designed the current governmental structure back in the early 1950s.
So, it is a very big challenge. We are going to have some hearings — in the middle of July — I forget the exact date — which I am sure will be in public, and we would encourage some attention to those, and we want to get the viewpoints of people in government, and there are a lot of organizations that are working with us and organizations that are not working with us. Some of those organizations are here today, and we want to see what we can do. We have a fairly lean commission. I am sure Paul Light has already written a report in his mind. (Laughter.) We will vet it and see whether it is correct or not. We won't permit it will get by with that, but obviously all this effort that Cal's been talking and Paul has been talking about I think certainly justify another attempt to deal with this building. On the one lesson I think of September 11th is that there are things in this country that only government can do; that government is after all rather essential. You can't privatize a response to a national crisis of that sort. You cannot privatize dealing with terrorism around the world. And there has to be some government and effective government leadership. And that is not only true in this dramatic effect — dramatic incident — but let's hope that that kind of recognition can be spread a bit more widely if we can demonstrate we have the tools to do the job.
MR. LIGHT: I think we will go to questions. I should say that earlier this week and in sort of the past few weeks we have been releasing some troubling data dealing with what the federal work force thinks about its work post-September 11th, which is not positive; dealing with what college seniors think about careers in government, which is not positive; and trust in government now, which is not positive.
MR. VOLCKER: Cal and Paul are so good in not positives. (Laughter.)
MR. LIGHT: I don't get invited to many parties. That's not to say that we are not hopeful about the possibilities of making and improving government, and to discount the tremendous dedication of people who are at work in government now. We have a got a hill to climb in terms of strengthening public service. There were a lot of people in the federal government who felt that the surge in trust following September 11th meant an end to the recruiting difficulties; that there would be a lot of people lining up. I think some of our partners have shown that it is still very difficult to get into government, and there are still barriers to a young person who might want to come into government. And while we want to celebrate the good things government does and celebrate the notion that we need a government, we also want to be pretty candid with you all about what we are seeing in real data about what's going on out there. And that's just part of the context for what we all need to do.
Let's see if you have some questions. We have Connie Horner here. I'll ask Connie for a comment shortly. Here.
Q: My name is Cynthia Samuels, and I have sort of a dumb question.
The first one is: Could you talk a little more about the first part of the title of this report, "An opportunity lost," and what you think wasn't done that could have made more of this horrible opportunity?
And the other part is the difference between public service, which young people seem very inclined toward right now and government service, and where you see the difference between the two?
MR. MACKENZIE: As I said, I think there was a moment — maybe an hour, maybe a day, I don't know, longer than a moment — when the focus because of the events of September 11th on what government does was unusually keen. Think for example about the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. We saw Joe Allbaugh every single day for days on end. And an opportunity for the leaders in Washington, particularly the highest leader in Washington, to talk about government as a respondent — to talk about government in a generic sense, as a respondent, as a necessity, as a place to be, where the action is.
If you compare that, for example, to the economic crisis of the 1930s, which drew bright young people from all over this country to Washington to try to fix what was wrong with the world, and in part because there was a clarion call that went out from Washington to do that. I am not sure we had that kind of clarion call. I can tell you as a college professor who spent the last couple of months, as I do every spring, talking to college seniors about their futures, that I have seen more college seniors this year interested in joining the armed forces than I have in the last 25 years. But I haven't seen any more college seniors this year interested in joining the civilian forces than I have in recent years. It's easy to — the Army and the Navy and the Air Force are recruiting, and they are visible and they are a presence on college campuses. Where is the federal government, and where is the voice of the federal government in this moment saying, Here is an opportunity — we need you now — there are great things happening in this world? This is a dangerous world again, and it is important for the best people, the brightest people in the society to be part of that.
Paul, do you want to do the second part?
MR. VOLCKER: Well, I want to make one comment on September 11th. I am the only one here from New York, and we're talking about the federal government. But, you know, it was really remarkable for obvious reasons to see the reactions to the police department, the fire department, and other civil servants in New York. These are not people who ordinarily I think are considered great heroes. Police commissioners are somebody you kick around. They've always got problems. The fire commissioner — whoever heard of them? I mean, you know, kind of not at the center of attention. But there's just a feeling of the people that these were highly competent people able to respond to an extreme emergency in a way that was unexpected — the emergency was unexpected — but the kind of response they got of course beginning with the mayor, who went from kind of a problem in many directions to a genuine hero, really did change the attitude of New Yorkers too I think toward public service generally. You've seen that I think in other crises — maybe big crises, maybe mini crises, where somehow kind of unexpectedly a faceless civil servant suddenly is in the middle of being asked to deal with a very difficult problem, and somehow seems to be very effective — not every time — but it always comes to somewhat of a surprise I think to people when somebody comes up out of the civil service or the bureaucracy and is an expert on anthrax or whatever. So I think we have some residual here to build upon that you still feel in New York.
Now, you had a question about public service. I get this all the time. You know, working for the government is not my great aspiration, but I want to do good and I want to do public service, so I am going to go with some other type of institution that has a nominal or maybe actual purpose of doing good. And I think that's fine to an extent. But I don't think it's real substitute in the end of the day — I'm an old bureaucrat I guess for government itself. A lot of those organizations, you know, they have their own agenda. But in the end not all of them can answer the question, Who elected you? You know, it's oftentimes a pretty special interest, and it may be a good interest or it may be a bad interest. But it's not quite the same I think as having to reconcile and govern, which is the job at the end of the government — not of a variety of non-profit institutions.
MR. LIGHT: Let me give you two pieces of data. One is on the college seniors front. We interviewed 1,015 college seniors — about-to-graduate seniors — in mid to late April, 500 at the nation's top 100 schools; the rest from other schools. We asked them, Have you very, somewhat, not at all considered the following destinations for a job after you graduate? Business came in first at 31 percent — very seriously considered working in business; the non-profit sector came in second at 20 percent; state and local government came in third at 18 percent; and the federal government was very seriously considered by 13 percent of these graduating seniors. Now, there's a big gulf between, "did I consider" and "am I going." So we don't know how many of that 13 percent will actually end up in the federal government, but the federal government is still running dead last.
Second point. The president of the United States needs to use his bully pulpit to call Americans to public service, including civil service. It's been now six months since the president last talked about the civil service. He last mentioned the civil service in a major address on October 15th. And he needs to talk to the American public about the honor of serving in the civilian side of government, as well as in the military. We desperately need talented Americans to serve in both. What we are seeing at the FBI and the SEC and the INS — I can go on and on with acronyms — is difficulties recruiting talented people into civilian positions in these services. And the president has a very strong bully pulpit from which to call young Americans to serve, and he ought to use it. He ought to make a major address as soon as he can on these issues.
We had a question a long time ago up here.
Q: Colonel Daktar (ph), ex-Indian Army. I just wanted to know was a similar survey carried out on the first catastrophic event that overtook America, that was Pearl Harbor? Pearl Harbor and 11th of September have two similarities in intensity and the surprise element. If it was taken, what is as compared to the Pearl Harbor survey this survey fares? What are the differences?
Second, if it was taken, then what is the quality of leadership prevailing at that time and now?
Thirdly, nature of the enemy. At that time it was an organized enemy state. Here it is completely incognito no state, but widespread.
MR. LIGHT: The answer is no. No survey was taken. The modern sampling and statistical sampling techniques were developed in the 1940s, and we started measuring these things systematically in the '50s. The closest analog to September 11th that I see in the trust in government data is the shut down of the federal government in 1995, when Americans are reminded about why they have a government, either because it's been taken away from them through a shut-down, or because they are urgently focused on the government because of their own security concerns and patriotism and worries. The trust of government goes up. They tend to submerge their basic and underlying and continuing resistance to big government. That's how I would explain it. But I'd say 1995 — we did see a bump in trust in government after the two government shut-downs in 1995. Cal?
MR. MACKENZIE: No, I agree with that.
MR. LIGHT: Judy? Okay, Connie. I want to take a comment from Connie Horner, and then we'll continue the questions. Up here. Up here.
MS. HORNER: Getting back to the question of an opportunity lost or missed, I would like to make a comment about what I think will come out of the Volcker Commission that you might put under the rubric of "opportunity reclaimed." I'd like to talk about Paul's interest in having the commission focus on operating performance, because I think that what happened in the immediate days and weeks after 9-11 was that the public's not just pretty good leadership at the top, both in New York and nationally from the president, but also a magnification of fear and dependency. And this is not a positive reason for spiking up trust in government, because fear and dependency can't be maintained as a sustaining motivation for trust. And I think what we have seen in the interim months, and what I would expect to produce even lower levels of trust in future surveys in the near term, is a series of operating performance failures — security screeners at the airport, whether on contract or not; difficulties with anthrax — weeks of fumigating congressional buildings on television night after night; the severe public embarrassment of the INS on numerous occasions, and more recently the FBI.
And so the public perception, which I would contend is not entirely inaccurate here, is that there have been severe failures of operating performance. And I think — our hope for the commission is that it will be able to use this moment of declining public trust honestly to confront the problem, leadership confronting the problem, and to say we can't simply batter federal employees and say, Do better; and we can't simply batter presidential appointees and say, You have got to lead better. We have to actually make changes in the incentives surrounding the work that federal employees do, to make it easier for them to work effectively and efficiently.
And I also think that once people begin to see operating performance improvements that there will be a lessened problem with recruitment. The armed forces have spiked up since 9-11 — not just because people want to serve, but because they are excited — young people are excited by success, and they want to identify with it. And we have had some military success. So if we can get operating performance success in the federal government, even though it will take more time and it will be less visible, I think over time if we can come up with strong recommendations which are strongly presented to the Congress and the White House that this will be the long-term solution.
MR. LIGHT: We asked in this survey respondents to estimate — just your best guess — how many federal employees are not performing their jobs well? That's a question we asked of private employees about their co-workers. They estimate that about a quarter of their co-workers are not performing their jobs well. We asked that of federal employees. They estimate that about a quarter of their co-workers are not performing their jobs well. But when we ask the American public just your best guess of what percentage of federal employees are not performing their jobs well, the average was 41 percent. Now, we are going to check that data out and see what they think. We're in the field right now looking at what Americans think is the performance rate of private sector employees. It might be the same. But any time you have 40 percent of Americans saying that over half of federal employees aren't doing their jobs well, or an average of 41 percent poor performance, I think that's troubling. Claudia, did you have a question?
Q: Claudia Deane with The Washington Post. Did you look at where the change came from in terms of demographics, whether it's a certain age group that spiked up and down? You know, any other demographics?
MS. LABINER: There were no significant differences, and we looked at — except the one that is mentioned in the survey in terms of African Americans and trust and their ability towards people who work for government. African Americans have a lower favorability towards people who work in government, but have a higher — have a stronger support for government programs overall. And that was the only demographic difference. We looked at, you know, age and the other variables on race, ethnicity, and didn't see any differences that were significant.
MR. LIGHT: Our friend from the Partnership.
Q: Max Stier from the Partnership for Public Service. As usual, I think this data is very helpful and important. I have a quick comment and a question for you.
On the comment side, I think you are clearly right there are a lot of things that are wrong. But one of the things I think we are missing is there are several things that are going on that are quite good. There are ways in which the government has improved. The IRS saw a 20 percent jump in its customer satisfaction from 1999. What's fascinating to me is that kind of improvement hasn't been picked up by the media, hasn't received any attention. And one wonders how do you break through so the media covers positive stories and not simply the negative?
Second, on the positive front, the Partnership, for example, launched an initiative called Called to Serve with university communities, because by and large the federal government has lost contact with university students, and your survey data demonstrates that quite powerfully. Our expectation was we would see 50 universities by the launch of the initiative. We had 360 that signed on; 41 federal agencies have signed on — which gives a good idea bout the appetite that exists on the federal government side as well as on the university side. Now after that quick spot, I'd like to ask you a question. And that is —
MR. LIGHT: I'm hoping that — (laughter) — you know, we are about to release a book called Government's Greatest Achievements.
MR. STIER: I've seen part of it, and it's a wonderful book.
MR. LIGHT: And I am hoping that the Partnership is going to buy just a ton of them — (laughter) — and distribute them to every college student at those 360 colleges.
MR. STIER: I think we have a discussion to be had on that absolutely. (Laughter.) We'd love to. I don't know about buying it, but what about on the net? We could put it on our website. (Laughter.)
MR. LIGHT: The story of my life. Why not Xerox it? (Laughter.)
MR. STIER: But you want the idea to be (inaudible).
In any event, my question to you really is something you focus on which I think is quite important is and the notion of what is the federal government when you are asking this question. And what's fascinating to me is the way you phrase the question is you ask them about their views of the federal government in Washington. As we know, 88 percent of the federal work force lives and works outside of Washington. The services the federal government supplies are by and large outside of Washington. And there's another component, which is the military. And that is if you ask people what they think about the federal government, are they really thinking of the military as being one of the services that the federal government is supplying? And so my question to you is: What does your data show about what people view is the federal government when you're asking them this question?
MR. LIGHT: We are kind of cursed by decisions made by question writers long past. The question about the federal government in Washington was originally designed I think in 1954 by my colleagues at the University of Michigan in the national election studies. I think they decided on the federal government in Washington to make sure people understood we're talking about the thing that's national as opposed to the thing that's state or local. You won't be surprised at the number of Americans, when you talk to them in a survey about the blurring of the lines and the lack of distinction between the local, the state and the federal, the contractor. I mean, it's almost basically that we are all on the same boat in many ways.
I think when we say the federal government in Washington we are directing them to think about the national government. And the value of this question is that you are able to track it then for 45 years, and that's — I mean, there are other studies by Gallup and Harris and Andy Kohut of the Pew Research Center for the People and Press, who did the 1997 study that we are talking about here, that look at that; you know, they test that question.
MR. MACKENZIE: Don't you think, Max, that a large percentage of Americans would be stunned to know that only 12 percent of federal employees work in Washington, that they probably would think it was the reverse?
MR. STIER: Absolutely. We have done some research that shows that. But I guess my question is really directed to I think that the problem here perhaps looking at the understanding the American people have about the federal government. And what's fascinating about what Paul Volcker had to say earlier is that you had these crises, you had these incidents that then make people understand the relevance of the government in their life, whether it be for homeland security or the SEC. But those are quick hits. And the sort of overall picture of what the government really means is not available. And therefore I think partly when you look at what is clearly a multidimensional problem, understanding how to change that perception seems to me to be quite key, and particularly focusing on the military, because my hunch would be that when you are asking people about the federal government they are not thinking about the military. And if you could make them understand that one of the services that in fact is being provided is the military, that again you would be able to share some of the good will that the military has generated across the whole government.
But I am really — I am most curious about what I think is something worth looking at.
MR. LIGHT: It's interesting to note that the INS, the flap over INS mailings of belated student visas to the flight school in Florida, that that mailing was made by a contractor — not well reported. The contractor is in London, Kentucky, ACS, Incorporated. But the American public blames government when contractors fail, generally speaking.
MS. HORNER: They should. The government hires contractors, the government supervises contractors.
MR. LIGHT: Yeah, but we might ask ourselves why that — why that particular contract ended up in Kentucky. (Laughter.) You might want to take a look at the Appropriations Committee membership. (Laughter.) Enough said about who hired that contractor.
Steve Kelman here.
Q: Steve Kelman from the Kennedy School. On the survey of college students, saying only 13 percent are seriously considering the federal government — let me put a interpretation of that that is much more glass-half-full than half-empty. The federal government constitutes far less than 13 percent of the work force of the United States. I think it's — I don't know the exact number — I think it's three percent. So I mean, if you ask how many college students are considering becoming farmers, I bet it is very, very small. There are very few farmers in the country. So given that the federal government constitutes three or four percent of the work force, actually you could say that we are in pretty good shape that an institution in our society that only hires let's say three percent of college seniors — actually four times as many are considering it. I mean, the numbers don't — I mean, it would be strange in a way if institutions that only hired three percent of college seniors, if 30 or 40 percent of college seniors were thinking of working for such institutions. So it's a somewhat more favorable interpretation of the same numbers.
Just say a factoid. This year three Kennedy School MPP graduates are going to work for the FBI. I believe, although I am not sure for absolutely certain, but I believe no Kennedy School MPP graduate in the history of the MPP program, in 30 years, has gone to work for the FBI. And this year three Kennedy School students are going to the FBI.
MR. VOLCKER: The FBI is saved by the Kennedy School. (Laughter.)
MR. KELMAN: Paul, we're doing our best. And there's a lot of saving that needs to be done. (Laughter.)
MR. LIGHT: I guess I'd want to know what courses those three students took. You know —
MR. KELMAN: One of them has actually done work on public management.
MR. LIGHT: Well, I think you make a good point, Steve. You're a glass half-full person. (Laughter.) I think that we can do better. I think that what's surprising in that data is that 13 percent were very interested, given that the federal government does practically nothing to stimulate interest. How those students found their way to the federal government is an interesting question, and of course we have done students of MPP students here, students, the top students and the federal government among public service students has not been the destination of choice in recent years. It's been the private sector and nonprofits. So —
MR. VOLCKER: I used to tell a different story 10 years ago at the previous commission. There was some survey of Yale surveys: Are you interested in working in the federal government, yes or no? And only one out of 600 said he was interested in working for the federal government. I used to say what surprised me was only one Yale student couldn't understand the question? (Laughter.)
MR. LIGHT: All right. Let's get Tom Mann and then up here, and we'll keep working our way back.
Q: Tom Mann of Brookings. I just wanted to follow up on a point that Connie and Paul Volcker and a number of you have been making, which is that the public learns from mega events, and the way in which government and leaders respond to those events shapes public attitudes toward government. And the immediate aftermath of Ground Zero helped produce the spike in trust. But since then we, as some of you have pointed out, we have had problematics in governmental performance.
And I wanted to ask about two in particular. One that Paul Volcker has been deeply involved in, the problem of accounting and transparency. And the other is the FBI. Now, my sense is that on the former that we are about to be let down by the Congress, that this is the case where strong action in the face of a lot of organized opposition is required to make a dramatic statement on behalf of the importance of government oversight. But that effort is dying a slow death on Capitol Hill. Maybe, maybe not. I'd be interested.
Then there's the FBI, in which we had the most remarkable two-hour performance by the director yesterday, and I'm just wondering whether you feel as if the response there may be a little more proactive, that we may see signs of some organizational transformation led by a government leader that may produce a happier outcome.
MR. VOLCKER: Let me comment on the accounting example. I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are, but there is a big problem. And you would think given all that's happening, given what's in the paper everyday, given Enron, Andersen on the front page of The New York Times every day for three months, there would be a surge of response that would be unstoppable. That is not the case, in terms where it seems to me quite a reasonable response potentially legislatively in the Senate, which illustrates a much wider problem beyond where that contractor came from.
But another example is: Has the impact of money, to put it bluntly, in our political system, itself become the major hazard, a major hazard, to efficient, effective, dispassionated, in some sense, government? That's something I don't think we can deal with in our commission, but it's a pretty important question, and the example you use, I think even if I can be a little bit more optimistic than you are, is a perfectly appropriate example, because it happens in one area after another.
Take another accounting area — nothing to do with the efficiency of government, but this whole question of what you do with the accounting for stock options. Whatever position one wants to take on that interesting issue, I don't think it's a matter for Congress to decide basically, and yet the Congress decides that they have a constituency that's very interested in it on one side of the question, and they are going to take a stand, or they did take a stand, and it looks like they are going to take a stand again, against a lot of evidence that it ought to be left to a more disinterested body. I don't know. You know, obviously we have been trying to deal with this by campaign funding reform. But it's part of the problem that I think sits there without any ready answer.
MR. LIGHT: On the FBI, I mean, I think that the director had — I mean, it was a terrific opportunity for him to stand up and say, I accept the criticism and I embrace the criticism. I think that's all too rare in government, and I think it was an admirable act.
Whether the reforms will be enough to change the culture of that agency, I don't know. The fundamental complaint from Minneapolis was the layering at headquarters. I think you have more agents being hired, better agents — the Kennedy School students being hired. But I didn't hear anything in the reorganization about flattening that agency so those Kennedy School students would be closer to the top. And that's the thing that drives the PMI, the presidential management interns —
MR. VOLCKER: The Kennedy School students are going to be at the top. (Laughter.)
MR. LIGHT: That's why I never hire the Kennedy School students. They're so busy trying to figure out how to get rid of you (laughter) that you have to always watch your back. At any rate, I think that it was a terrific thing for him to do, and I wish more folks did it, and we're — we'll see — I mean, he was hammered already last night by Congress and Senator Grassley and so forth. I mean, the difference between the admission of the need for reform and the blast of the inadequacy of action has declined by some factors geometric I think. So we'll see.
MR. MACKENZIE: I want to say one more — you know, on the premise of your question, that public perceptions are shaped by mega-events — a premise with which I agree — is the kernel of the big problem here. In many ways government performs best when we don't know it's doing anything. You know, I am, like probably other people in this room, I'm alive because of an air bag in an automobile. That air bag was in the automobile because government regulations forced the automobile manufacturers to put it in there.
I had a close friend who went to Beijing for a year, and when he came back I noticed his daughter had a cut over her head, or a scar, and I hadn't seen it before. And I asked about it. He said they had a bottle of soda pop that exploded on a shelf, and a piece of glass flew across the kitchen and cut her head. And he said when he went back to the store and mentioned it, they said, Oh, yeah, that happens with that brand all the time. Well, it doesn't happen in America all the time, because we'd have an instant recall if that happens. And there are many things that government does well that we don't know about, because they save our lives, protect us. We don't get burned up in fires and things of that sort. How you tell that story when the government shuts down — we get some sense of that. When you can't get a passport, then you realize that, Oh, I do need the government to get a passport — you didn't realize that before. That's the hard sell, and that's government at its best in many ways. But it's the silence that we don't hear.
MR. LIGHT: I'm damn glad you're still with us. (Laughter.) Maybe you shouldn't be driving late at night. (Laughter) A question?
Q: Mr. Volcker, you said earlier to break the maligned cycle that things needed to be done that actually inspire confidence in government. What kind of things did you have in mind?
MR. VOLCKER: A couple of things in mind that we are going to propose this commission — no. I — I am not talking about specific changes in the FBI or what they might do, or what we do in protecting airports, or whatever. That's all beyond me. We want to focus on some systems that give a chance of getting better results in a variety of specific areas. I think it comes down to these detailed questions of recruitment, of pay, of motivation, of training. But I think there are some other organizational questions that we — I don't want to cite at this point, because I'm not sure I am on solid enough ground. When we get support and debate in the commission and some conclusions about larger organizational questions, we will reveal them. But I am not ready to reveal them right at the moment.
MR. LIGHT: I do think that every once in a while we realize that performance and human capital and organization matter. I think that's the lesson that's come out of so many stories over the last six months, both positive and negative about government. That's how we organize ourselves to do business, how we train our workers, how we reward them — that that really matters. That we can just look at both the positives and negatives on it. Look at the war in Afghanistan where fundamental reorganizations of the Department of Defense 10, 12 years ago really produced intense coordination across the services of a kind that we have not seen in previous conflicts. Look at what happened at INS or the FBI. I mean, organization matters for good and for ill. And I think that to me is the opportunity lost that we had a moment where we could have made some progress on dealing with the big barriers to some big ticket reforms. And I like the title "opportunity reclaimed." Can I have that? Okay, all right. Well, that's a good one.
I think we have time for one more question, and then we're going to call it closed. Do you have a comment?
Q: I'm Don Workman with COSI . I just want to posit a quick answer to the opportunity lost. Since September 11th we have seen Bush sign the executive order about the presidential records act that limit public access to those. We have seen the Department of Justice insist that the hearings into the detainees should be closed, which we saw the court order in the Washington Post today blocked that. We've seen the administration continue to insist that the Enron documents be shut down. And, finally, Lieberman had to do the subpoena. And we have seen Tom Ridge refuse to testify. Has this Bush administration desire for secretness sort of contributed to the loss of public trust?
MR. LIGHT: I think it has. Do you want to answer that one? Because —
MR. VOLCKER: Me? (Laughter.)
MR. LIGHT: Yeah. I think if it had affected Bush you would have seen it in his favorability ratings. I do think that this administration has a penchant for secrecy. Tom Ridge did not refuse to testify; the White House prohibited him from testifying. And I think that has a legislative response. I think Congress will create a statutory base for his office, and is going to act. And I think the White House has realized it.
I think the thing to admire about yesterday's conversation with the FBI director was the transparency. Whether — I hope he meant it in terms of embracing Rowley and the FBI agents who were raising concerns that the all too frequent reaction would be to figure out a way to send them to Siberia — metaphorically. So —
MR. VOLCKER: I would not have thought the kind of thing that you are mentioning, whatever you think about those actions or resistance specifically are much to do with the general trend that we are reporting here in terms of trusting government. This has been a long — it's a reversion to a trend that existed long before — I can't say before George Bush was born — (laughter) — but before we thought of him as being in the White House. I just don't think that's a significant factor at the moment. Whatever — I'm not speaking to the merits of what they're doing, but I don't think that's basic.
MR. LIGHT: I think we're at 10:30. I'd like to say that I'll always be short, but I can be brief. Paul Volcker can't say that. (Laughter.) He'll always be tall, but he can be brief. We appreciate your coming. We're going to have another event on June 27th, to release the survey of federal employees, some new data on what's happening in the federal government in terms of employment and so forth. And I think that stuff has both positive and troublesome components. So perhaps we'll see some of you on the 27th of June. Thanks to the panel, and thanks to you for coming.
(Applause and end of event.)