WEBVTT - Who Is Government with Michael Lewis 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.520 Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question. 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:14.760 I love talking with Michael Lewis. He has this incredible 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.200 ability to zoom in on one person's story and from 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:22.000 there reveals something much bigger about our culture. His books 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:24.919 leave you seeing the world differently, and his books about 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:29.240 federal workers are no exception. So why has the federal 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:32.479 government gotten such a bad rap? Why are the workers 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:37.040 often maligned even demonized? After all, they're described with words 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.640 like the deep state and the swamp. Michael Lewis feels 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.600 very differently after writing about a group of these civil servants, 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:47.239 first in The Fifth Risks and now in a new 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:51.440 book of essays called Who Is Government? This time Lewis 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:55.160 and a powerhouse lineup of writers turn their attention to 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.080 people who are some of the unsung heroes of our 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:03.000 society actually making government work, even though Elon Musk and 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:07.319 his posse of doge dudes made beg to differ. Here's 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:14.880 my conversation with Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis, you must have 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:18.920 a crystal ball, because Who Is Government? The untold story 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:22.840 of public service could not be more timely. Now I 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:25.920 know this is a continuation of sorts of your twenty 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:29.640 eighteen book called The Fifth Risk. You examined the transition 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:34.080 and political appointments of the first Trump administration, But what 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.720 made you decide to do another deep dive into the 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:38.600 federal government? 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.399 So there are two reasons. The good literary argument was 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:44.480 at the end of The Fifth Risk, I had to 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.400 go back and write it afterward for the paperback, and 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:49.760 I thought to myself that I'd done a lot to 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:52.880 describe the functions of government in that book, but I 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.360 had not really dwell gone deep on a person really, 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.240 and I thought might be fun to just go deep 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.320 on one of our old bureaucrats. And I basically picked 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:04.480 a name out of a jar. I mean, it's a 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.200 long story how I picked the guy, but it was 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:09.280 just it was kind of random, and the story. He 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.080 ended up being an oceanographer in the Coast Guard Search 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:16.200 and Rescue Department who had had this quite dramatic encounter 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:19.040 with the death of a young woman and her and 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.760 her daughter that it caught, I mean, it was avoidable. 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.799 Had they under the Coastguard understood how objects drifted at sea, 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.240 they kind of knew where they had capsized in the 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.800 Testapeake Bay. They knew like how the currents were and stuff, 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.680 but they were upside down on a sailboat and nobody 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:38.799 had ever measured how a sailboat drifted at sea. This guy, 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:42.200 my subject guard Allen, was so disturbed by the fact 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.880 that they these two people died because they didn't know 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:47.519 how the object had drifted since they discovered they were gone, 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:50.680 that he went and created basically a whole science of 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.760 how objects drifted sea. And it was it was such 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:55.840 a he was such an amazing story. I mean, it's 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.640 a movie his story that I thought, like, if I 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:01.320 ever come back to this, I want to come back 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:05.160 to the people, because because the stereotype of the of 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.200 the bureaucrat or whatever you are, the deep state or 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:10.639 whatever you want to call him, he was such a 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:15.880 He was a mission driven, selfless giver of a person 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:19.000 who was also ingenious in how he'd solved a critical 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.119 problem that has saved thousands of lives. So I thought, 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:23.680 if I ever come back to this, I'm gonna see 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.120 what more of this there is in our government. So 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:29.240 that was the first the literary reason. It is like 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.040 this material here because the people, the way people think 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.520 of these people, they don't they're faceless. They don't put 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.360 a face to them, so they're easy to knock around 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.880 in when you're by politicians, by media, by whoever. Uh. 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:47.200 The second reason was I was just astonished after especially 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.120 after Trump won and then neglect of the federal government 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:55.160 during that administration, that the Democrats never offered a full 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:59.760 throated like defense or even an explanation of like where 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.400 are taxpayer dollars? Go, like what is it actually doing? 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.200 And who are these people? That they never kind of 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.840 came out and said, like, there's a reason we have 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:13.120 this government. So no one ever sold the government. So 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:14.760 I thought like there was so there are all these 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.960 stories that just didn't get told. So the idea, So 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.200 I thought, like the world needs to understand some of 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:22.360 these stories, and so they don't think it's just like 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:26.000 Michael Lewis bloviating with his views of government, blah blah blah. 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:28.880 I'm going to pick six other writers and it's not 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:30.679 going to just be me. It's going to be seven 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.960 really distinctive personalities on the page, and I'm going to 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.120 just like drop them into the government, say find a story, 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:40.400 could you know, find a story and write up and 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:44.800 so much of the book ran in the weeks. About 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:46.960 seven eighths of the book ran in the weeks running 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:50.799 up to the election in the Washington Post. Weird long pieces. 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:53.960 I mean, my longest piece is thirteen thousand words, and 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:56.920 it was so powerful the effect, but for a very 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:58.880 small audience, because it was like the Washington Post and 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.920 behind a paywall, and it was pretty obvious these things 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.600 should They were a coherent hole and they should be collected. 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:06.800 But of course, having said that, no one had any 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:08.240 I did. Donald Trump was going to be the president 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:09.839 of the United States and be doing what he's doing 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:11.960 to the federal government where we wrote these things. 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:16.360 In fact, in the Washington Post opinion series where the 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:20.799 essays in this new book originated, they received four times 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:23.800 the session's average readership. And you've said it was like, 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:30.000 the country is hungering for an explanation of how government works. 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:30.960 Yeah, where do you. 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:35.400 Think that hunger is coming from? And why do you 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:40.159 think the quote unquote bureaucracy, which is often said in 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:43.640 a very pejoradaed way, it's so misunderstood. 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.640 Well, so remind me to answer the second part of 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.760 that question, because that's the longer and interesting answer. But 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:54.160 the hunger in the first place, we just don't get 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.760 stories very many stories about the government, or when we 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.440 get them, they're in the form of some poor civil 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.640 servants hall in front of Congress to be ritually humiliated 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:05.640 for some mistake they made. And I do think I 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:07.640 don't know this is true, but I've been told it's 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:09.960 true that there has been just to kind of decline 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.560 in civics education in the country. Like the Civics course 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:15.159 you got in the eighth of the ninth grade is 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.039 not as widely taught anymore, are not taught in the 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.200 same way. So you know, just like how a bill 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.680 becomes a law, that kind of stuff just doesn't get 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:23.760 into kids' brains. 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:25.960 We need Schullhouse rock part too. 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:28.839 Yeah, it's something like that. No, it's kind of true. 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:32.600 But the second part of this is like these people 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:37.960 who work in these jobs are one forbidden from promoting 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.600 themselves and they don't have time to do it anyway. Two, 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:44.120 they're really not the kind of people who tell their 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.719 own story. They're not self promoters. They're almost the opposite 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.160 of self promoters. They give you a lit'll tell you 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.599 a little anc though it's funny. When I went to 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.520 write that piece about the first the first deep dive 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.000 I did in a single person. Arthur Allen was his name, 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.719 the oceanographer of the Coast Guard. I called him up, 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:02.080 said I want to come talk to you about what 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.239 you've done. Without knowing really much about what he'd done, 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.440 spent three days with him, with his wife, his kids, 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.680 you know, interviewing people around him, three full days with him. 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.520 At the end of three days, I was driving back 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:20.120 to the airport and he calls my cell phone. He says, says, hey, 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:24.240 you're a writer. And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm a writer. 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:25.880 Well you think you know? I sit there with a 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:28.360 notepad for three days taking notes, and I know. I 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.520 said I was a writer when I called you. He says, 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:32.880 but my son says that like you've written books that 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:36.080 have become movies, like you're like big time. And I said, well, 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:37.560 don't know if I'm big time, but I am a writer. 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:39.480 And he says, you're going to write about this, and 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:41.200 I said, yeah, I'm I going to write about this. 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:43.119 What do you think I was doing there for three days? 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:45.840 And he said, I just thought you were really interested 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.960 in how objects drift, And I thought, this is the 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.240 mind of someone He's so different from like the investment 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.240 banker you go to interview. He's so oblivious, he's interested 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:00.720 in his expertise. He's very narrow, he's not thinking like 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:03.640 how he appears to the world. He's open to help 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:06.600 people who come to him for help, but not thinking 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:08.240 at all, like I was going to turn him into 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:10.840 some celebrity and didn't know what to do with it 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:16.200 or care that they're that way. So they don't project. 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.600 So someone has to go project them for us because 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.520 they won't do it themselves. And there's a built in 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:26.480 problem in the government. The politicians and I hate to say, 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:28.720 I hate to use that word as a pejorative, but 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.160 it is just true that people who are campaigning and 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:36.520 running for elective office find it very useful to be 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.200 negative about the civil service and to blame them for 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.520 their or when problems occur. But there's not really any 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.200 upside for giving them credit. It's like the politicians want 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.600 the credit. So the people who are junior class senior 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.520 class president types who are out there waiving at the crowds, 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.000 have no real interest in selling the mechanism of the government. 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:58.200 And I think we all kind of know, you know, 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:00.520 the government we sent in the back of our minds. 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:03.079 This government is doing something. You know, it's it's kind 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:04.920 of magical. You get you turn on the tap and 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.720 you get cold water you can drink. You know, that's 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:09.679 that doesn't just happen and it comes from like a 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:13.280 reservoir from three hundred miles away or that you know, Uh, 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.440 the weather is predictable seven days out. Used to be 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.160 not predictable at all. Ah, that happened. It just becomes 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.920 like the the infrastructure of our lives. And I think 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.680 until it's threatened, you just it's like your parents. Until 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:30.720 they're threatened, you just think, well, they're there, Thank God, 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:32.640 they're there. Maybe, but I'm not going to pay much 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.960 attention to them. But the minute it becomes like, oh crap, 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.160 they're going to take it away, even if it's just 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:43.120 a hint of that, people kind of wake up and go, oh, oh, oh, 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:44.959 I need maybe I need to know about this. 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.160 You illuminated, Michael, why people don't appreciate the federal government, 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:53.040 why they often take it for granted. But it's even 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:58.760 worse than that. There's an enduring, an entrenched negative stereotype 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.920 in our culture about civil servants that they're stupid, and lazy, 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.760 as you describe it. How did that happen? I know 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.160 that they're not good at telling their stories or blowing 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.200 their own rams horns like politicians are. But where do 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.839 you think this negative perception comes from? 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:18.720 I mean, I think it's a it's a it's like 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:22.520 a it's a complicated question to answer, but I mean, 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:27.560 most most obviously, they don't do the thing that we 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.360 value in this culture, which is make money. They don't. 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.680 They don't have they're not successful people. They're not famous people. 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:36.560 They're not you know, they're not there. So they don't 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:41.720 have that going for them. They're also they're vulnerable because 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.760 the enterprise they work for is most complicated enterprise ever 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:47.679 created on in the history of the university, the United 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.040 States government, and they're spending now seven trillion dollars a 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.720 year there, and they're bound to be problems. You know. 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.800 It's just sort of like they're bound to be mistakes made, 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:59.760 and when they're made, it's sort of it's sort of 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:02.000 like it's assumed no mistakes will be made, and when 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:06.800 they're made, they get exposed and ridiculed and all the rest. 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.120 You know, Why else is it this one? I mean, 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:12.160 you know, I haven't really thought too much about how 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:15.840 this why Ronald Reagan could roll in, you know, forty 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:17.760 five years ago or whatever it was fifty years ago 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.400 and say the most you know, dangerous words in the 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:22.720 English languages, I'm from the government and I'm here to 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:23.040 help you. 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:27.679 Didn't he also say that the government is the problem. 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:31.760 Yeah, and the government, you know, there's this fantasy you 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.920 take it away and everything's going to be better, And 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.280 the truth is, you don't have markets without the government, 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.240 you don't have an awful lot of our economic growth 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.439 is driven by government private partnerships. But what you all, 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:46.480 you know, this is part of the reason they're so 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.720 easy to beat up on is a lot of what 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:53.160 they're doing is prevention. Like a lot of what they're 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.480 doing is stopping things from happening. And when you stop 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.559 something from happening, you don't get credit. You get credit 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.360 when you come after the bad thing has happened. So 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:04.240 there's an awful lot of work that's out there, I 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.400 don't know, stopping someone from getting a bomb on a plane. 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:09.240 Who do you think is doing that? I can tell 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:12.160 you who's doing that. There's a lab called a Livermore 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:15.040 lab that's like forty miles from my house, where they 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.840 are constantly experimenting with different sort of chemicals and ingredients 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:20.080 to see what you might be able to make a 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:22.920 bottom of. And as they whenever they find something new, 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:25.559 they program those machines that you put your bag through 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:28.960 to detect those things. And you don't see any of it. 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:31.880 But if they weren't there, you would notice. You know, 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.560 the FAA right, your plane doesn't crash if it doesn't, 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:39.240 you know, air safety is a you know, a miracle 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:41.800 of modern life. It's the government. But you're not getting 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.360 credit for the plane not crashing, so a lot I 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:46.320 think that's also part of it. It's sort of easy 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.800 to beat up on them because there's a lot of 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:51.760 their work is preventive, a lot of it is just 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:54.480 keeping us safe. And as I say, they're just not 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.000 doing the thing that's celebrated in the culture, which is 0:12:57.559 --> 0:12:58.120 make money. 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:02.480 Meanwhile, the administration, as you know, I've thought about you 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:07.199 often with these DOGE government cuts, but even before DOGE 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:12.640 was created, they have not only encouraged this stereotype as 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:17.800 bureaucrats or government workers being stupid and lazy and extraneous, 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:21.400 if you will, but they've turned it into something more sinister. 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.200 Let me give you a quote that jd Vance said 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.360 on a podcast in twenty twenty one. If I was 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:31.000 giving Trump one piece of advice, it's fire every single 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:36.040 mid level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:38.840 and replace them with our people. 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:42.839 So it's just such a misconception of who these people 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:46.920 are in the first place, because it's probably true that 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:50.280 the government workers generally probably tilt more left than right, 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:52.839 but their politics are very hard to predict. You'd be 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:56.040 surprised who they voted for, I think. But the bigger 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.920 point is most of what they're doing is so nonpartisan. 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:04.079 It's like it's it's stuff that the Congress has allocated 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.079 money for because it's problems that needed to be dealt with, 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:10.200 and they're dealing with them. And the list is like 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:13.160 endless of what these problems are. But you know, you 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.640 know about air safety, but like there's all this stuff 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:20.320 you don't see. Rural America, for example, is propped up 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.640 by the Agriculture Department. Like there wouldn't be firehouses and 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.320 schools and all they would It would be a wasteland 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.240 without the spending from the Agriculture Department. And that's something 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:32.920 you can argue that we shouldn't have, but that argument's 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:36.200 been had by Congress, and it's authorized. The money and 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:38.120 the people who are the people who are in there 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:42.240 working are they're just trying to execute tasks and and like, 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:46.000 how is it, how is it partisan to like make 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:50.360 sure nuclear weapons don't explode when they they they shouldn't explode. 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:54.560 It's just it's such a misapprehendsion of what that enterprise 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.760 is and what they're doing. It's interesting because what they're 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:03.600 doing is accusing the existing workforce of being essentially political, 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:07.480 like their deep state. They're out to get us, when 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.520 in fact that it's not who they are. But what 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.680 they're trying to do is turn it into something. It's 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.880 very political. It's out to get the other side. And 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:21.200 it's taking fifty thousand jobs and turning them from career 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:25.640 civil service jobs to essentially patronage jobs that the Trump 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:30.400 administration can appoint not based on expertise, but based on loyalty. 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.920 How dangerous is that replacement in your view. 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.880 It's dangerous on a couple of levels. It's very dangerous, 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.760 and it is one it's going to make the government 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.560 a lot less effective because you're replacing people who actually 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:46.160 know things with people who don't and their main qualification 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:48.720 is they're just loyal with Donald Trump. That's not a 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:52.200 good place to start when you're solving complicated problems. But 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.040 it's dangerous in another way that if you actually succeed 0:15:56.000 --> 0:16:00.320 in turning the federal government into what Trump advance say, 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:04.840 it is, turning it into this political weapon, it's hard 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:07.080 to know. You know, it's from there to like no 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:11.360 democracy is a half step, and so it's dangerous on 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.000 that level too, and it'll have this knock on effect. 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:16.560 And this is the knock on effect of a lot 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:22.000 of Republican rhetoric is you know, you disable, you villainize 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:26.320 this enterprise that's there to serve us all, you make 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:29.280 it less effective at what it's supposed to do. And 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:30.960 then you could point to it and say, look how 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:34.000 ineffective it is, Like the problem is government. Well, no, 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:37.200 the problem is how you run the government. The problem 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:37.960 is in government. 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.240 If you want to get smarter every morning with a 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:52.560 breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.960 wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter 0:16:56.040 --> 0:17:08.520 Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot Com. I'm 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.840 curious how you feel this kind of rhetoric, things like 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:17.200 weaponizing or demonizing the deep state, how that erodes the 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:22.080 public trust in our government and institutions in general. 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:25.119 I mean, I'm trying to think of some equivalent. Where 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:29.240 can you think of a product or a service or 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:32.720 that is just all it gets is negative publicity, and 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.600 it's like there's like a publicity machine designed to undermine it, 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.720 and that's all people here. I mean, it's just there's 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:43.680 no question that public there is this reflexive public opinion, 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:45.640 especially on the right, but not just on the right, 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:51.159 that like, oh, it's just government's waste, government's fraud. So 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:52.960 this would attracted me to somebody in the first place, 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:55.159 is I don't have any big stake in government. I 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:57.320 just saw that wasn't true because I wanted around the 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:01.480 government and saw what was there. And what's what's what's 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:06.160 shocking about it is whatever people believe because of what 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.120 they've heard from casual this kind of casual loose talk. 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:14.080 The opposite is kind of true that if you're looking 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:18.760 for waste or fraud, you were so much more likely 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.439 to find it in a private sector company than you 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:26.440 are in a in a government agency, especially fraud like that, 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.080 that the places are on a hair trigger or alert 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.560 for like people stealing money. You can't you know, you 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:34.920 can't you when you're on Wall Street and you wanted 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:36.760 to get business, you could, you know, take people to 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:39.160 strip clubs and get them front row seats to watch 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:41.800 the Mets and all that stuff. You can't buy a 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:45.040 sandwich for someone who works in the federal government. That 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:47.960 it is. So it is like and there and all 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.880 around these places are watchdogs whose job is to prevent 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.480 money from being stolen. And in fact, the first people 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.880 the Trumpe administation fired were those watchdogs. So that tells 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:00.920 you something about how much they care, actually care about 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.760 the fraud. The waste is more complicated because it's true that, 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.600 like there are some ways government does things that if 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:10.840 you were starting from scratch, that's not how you do them. 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:13.720 And there is, for sure ways to go in and 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.639 make it work work somewhat better. But the way but 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:19.960 the way to when that in that case, the way 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:21.919 to go in is with an appreciation of why it 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:23.679 works the way it is, because you're just gonna end 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:26.040 up recreating with what was created. If you don't understand 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:27.919 why it got the way it was. It's like, there 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:32.760 are reasons, there are reasons. It's like there's analyst bureaucracy 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:36.200 around contracting. You know, it's to revent the fraud kind 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:39.760 of thing. And it's maddening how it's done because basically 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.360 there's no trust. You know, it's a low trust environment. 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.680 And in a low trust environment, it's a very inefficient environment. 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:47.520 When you got to sign pieces of paper to get 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:49.439 an extra box to take the paper clips, you're going 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:51.119 to be less efficient. And if you can just go 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:54.520 to the storeroom and take one. So there are problems there, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.320 but a lot of the wasteful problems will rise from 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:01.439 the mistrust about the institution. It's been sown into the 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:04.800 public mind by this rhetoric. I mean, let me ask 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:06.560 you a question. You're asking me questions, but I want 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.119 to ask you a question. Is it not if you 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.680 just back away from it? Kind of weird that we're 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:15.879 in a democracy where we elected people to do stuff, 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:18.880 and these things that got done by the government. It's 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.440 not like some autocrat did it. We the people did it, 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:25.440 and that we view the these civil servants, the instruments 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:30.080 of our will, as somehow our enemies, somehow like insiders 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.080 trying to bring us down. It's a really odd thing 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.280 for in a democracy for people to feel that way 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:40.600 about their government. And anyway, I didn't have it, As 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:42.800 I said, I came into this, I didn't have any 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:46.439 particular view. I'm not like some screaming liberal. I like 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:48.840 people who make money and none of that. It was 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:54.879 just I could not believe like the heroism basically in 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:58.359 the civil service, could not believe the quality of the 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:03.919 people that were engaged in such critical stuff, like the 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.119 society falls apart if they're not there. And I started 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:10.440 pulling my hair out when I realized, like, oh, they've 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:13.520 been doing this for thirty years and all they've heard is, 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:18.000 you know, abuse from the outside. It just like there's 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:21.320 something untrue about this. So my question for you is, 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:25.480 how do you explain this, Like it just seems really odd. 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:30.199 I think that government workers for as long as I 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:34.800 can remember, growing up in Arlington, Virginia, outside DC, where 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:37.600 a lot of people did work for the government, I 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:42.160 think there was an attitude that there was excess and 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:49.840 redundancy and inefficiency in the federal government. And I think 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:53.480 it's just been a stereotype that for whatever reason, has 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:58.040 been baked in yes to our national consciousness, and that's 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:03.080 but of course there are critical jobs. But I think 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:07.800