A Decade in Politics and Government
John Llewellyn
@ Wake Forest University
Swimming Uphill
By way of introduction, I worked in politics and government for ten years. Most of this time was spent in North Carolina State government or with the City of Raleigh. I am proud of the programs and organizations with which I was associated. However, it should also be noted that I am no longer in any of those settings and instead spent five years during my 30s pursuing a doctorate in communication. So my experience with administrators and politicians must not have been an unalloyed pleasure or I would still be there. What follows are my impressions of practical political life and the story of my migration away from it.
As Tip O'Neill wisely observed, "All politics is local." I learned that lesson 20 years before Tip added it to the canon. A man named Clarence Lightner taught me. Lightner was elected Mayor of the City of Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1973; I was working in the City's public information office at the time. Over the next two years I wrote speeches for him, arranged media interviews and attended all sorts of gatherings with him as an unofficial aide. I served as his representative to the county bicentennial commission.
The mayor never set out to teach me anything as far as I can tell but I gained a lot of political insight through the time I spent with him. Here are some of the highlights.
All politics is personal. When Lightner was mayor, Raleigh was a town of perhaps 150,000. I cannot prove that he did not know them all. One day we were walking from City Hall to a hotel on the downtown plaza for a meeting. The distance was 200 yards. The walk took 45 minutes. Clarence knew everyone in the street and stopped to talk to them all. Each encounter was a warm and hearty chat; in every case, no matter of public policy was discussed and no political philosophy was articulated by either party.
After I got over my urge to "be on time" for our downtown meeting, I settled back to learn. And so, ever so slowly, we worked our way along the three blocks to the plaza. Clarence knew what I would learn -- that meetings start when the mayor gets there and a smile and a greeting takes care of a little delay.
Lest I conclude that the mayor knew only those in the business district, he gave me another lesson. We went to a minimum-security facility on the grounds of North Carolina's Central Prison in Raleigh. The mayor had been invited to address the inmates. As we approached the inner compound a voice from inside the fenced exercise yard hailed the mayor. He turned and looked and spotted the speaker. He then replied, "Well, Charlie, are you still here?" The inmate's friends whooped at the fact that Charlie knew the mayor and vice versa. Clarence went up to the fence and talked to Charlie for three or four minutes before going into the building to give his speech. Charlie was, in all likelihood, a felon who would never cast a vote for the mayor or anyone else. But he was still a friend of the mayor, especially as a guest of the State.
Charisma is no abstract notion. In my two years of interaction with Clarence Lightner I never saw anyone leave an encounter with him without feeling better and more alive. Even in crises he had a positive outlook and a personal warmth that gave you confidence not just in him but in yourself as well. In those bachelor days I made a point of getting anyone I was dating to meet the mayor--not to score points as some sort of bigshot but to share the pleasure of meeting him.
Another Lightner lesson was about tolerance and coalition building. I have only one artifact of my government career in my Wake Forest University office. I do not think about those days much unless I need an example of knucklehead behavior for an organizational communication lecture. The artifact is a photograph of the mayor and the mayor pro tem. It is of a news conference and the mayor is speaking into a bank of microphones while the mayor pro tem is holding up a basketball jersey and beaming for the cameras.
In 1975, Raleigh was named an All-America City. This is a designation that makes Chamber of Commerce hearts go pitter-pat. Beyond that result, the designation is a token of clean government, sound economic policies and decent cooperation among the races. The mayor and the city manager were pleased to have the city recognized in this way. The problem: all of the values the award represents are too amorphous for television. Even in those days, the popular sentiment was that if it is not on television then it did not happen.
North Carolina State University is located in Raleigh and both the mayor and the mayor pro tem were big fans of the school's athletic teams although neither was an alum. In 1974, the North Carolina State Wolfpack men's basketball team had dethroned UCLA, led by center Bill Walton, in the national semi-finals and went on to win the national championship. They would win again in 1982. The star of the 1974 team was David Thompson, whose fame was a precursor to the sort of adulation now focused on Michael Jordan. At 6'4" Thompson played above the rim and amazed fans with his acrobatic moves. In the spring of 1975 NC State retired his jersey, number 44, with much fanfare.
So the challenge was how to convey the significance of Raleigh's All-America City designation in a televisual way. Using some connections with the NC State athletic director's office, the City borrowed Thompson's recently retired jersey to use as a prop at the news conference. The mayor introduced the award by explaining that it was recognition that Raleigh was as good a city as David Thompson was a basketball player. While he said all this, the mayor pro tem stood by his side.
Where is the lesson here? I have withheld the fact that Clarence Lightner was an African-American and that the mayor pro tem was hardly a political ally. In fact, the mayor pro tem was the retired fire chief carried into elective office on the strength of civic club support. As fire chief he had made several highly publicized and ungracious remarks about minority residents of Raleigh. His hiring practices in the fire department had resulted in a protracted investigation and lawsuit by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
So Clarence could have kept Jack out of the limelight and had ample reason to do so. But Clarence knew how much Jack loved NC State and how loyal he was to the city in his own fashion so he called him up to the podium to hold the jersey and share the moment -- and the glory. I am no Pollyanna; that ceremony did not remove all the tension between these two men but it did give them some common ground and some room to work with one another. I think Clarence Lightner was a pragmatist and an optimist who was willing to look for the best in people no matter how deeply it was hidden.
I would like to offer you a happy ending. I cannot. I went on to another job in another town but I heard pieces of the story. A member of the mayor's family was charged with shoplifting. There was a highly publicized trial that I recall ending in acquittal but of course the political damage was done. The mayor's political career was over. The motive for the charges was subject to much speculation and resentment within the community, feelings that probably remain to this day.
> I learned about the personal and local dimensions of politics during my time in city government. When I moved up to state government, also headquartered in Raleigh, I was surprised that there was remarkable little discussion of partisan distinctions. I can recall only one instance where party politics seemed to influence a decision. This observation is another way of saying that my government service was remarkably non-partisan. Indeed, the process was virtually without ideology.
> The fundamental issue during my time in state government seemed to be how to get this sucker to work -- not the more refined question of what should we do with the power and influence of government. So for me, state government service was about the most basic issue -- organizational function. This struggle to do anything well -- much less something worthwhile -- was the central fact of life in state government. In that sense, state service was for the most part apolitical; the refinements of doctrinal disputes were beyond the reach of that system. Promoting doctrine in that system would have been the equivalent of trying to teach a pig to sing opera. All of our efforts were spent trying to get this pig merely to hum along.
Why was this so? At the time I thought the main culprit was intransigence. My graduate work has offered me the insight to see additional explanations -- sometimes poor management, contradictory directives, and/or organizations and some employees who prefer to think in terms of geologic time when considering anything potentially controversial. Little attention is given to how many interests want government programs to be ineffectual; it is useful to some people to have programs they can both point to for political cover and ignore as a practical matter. In state government inspections for worker safety are a good example. The program's existence is cited to preclude other efforts; inspectors are so overmatched by procedures and overwhelmed by caseloads that their likelihood of success is minimal.
Ironically, programs I worked on continue to be influential, primarily because nature ignores bureaucrats and politicians. Water quality and coastal management plans from 15 years ago are still consulted and debated because pollution and rampant coastal development still threaten the state's future. Inexorably, the issues surface and resurface. Even rock-ribbed conservatives in the state legislature have to take notice because their constituents are complaining about environmental deterioration around their lake- or beachfront homes. Government really must do more than print money and provide for the national defense.
In reflecting, I ask myself how I came to leave. There is a short answer and a long answer. The shortest answer was that I saw myself becoming frustrated and my sense of humor, usually a bulwark, was beginning to fail. Two incidents summarize the frustration. Early in my state government career I had the chance to work for a newly appointed cabinet secretary whose reputation I had always admired. I was eager to see how this person would lead so many important programs. In writing his speeches I soon realized that this person really had nothing to say and that this problem was beyond my capacity to repair. The agenda was about enhancing one's own prestige and reputation not through action but simply through being in office. The problem was compounded by the secretary's preference for young, blonde and curvaceous advisors and assistants. These selections did not mean that anything untoward was going on between these people; the secretary just seemed to enjoy the company of young women. This pattern was not a matter of sexual misconduct but rather of wasting the opportunity to get advice from a range of people. Maybe I was naive in assigning my loyalties then; if so, I left that trait there and vowed "never again" to be taken in by such shallow posturing.
The second and more troubling incident involved a campaign for clean water bonds. Every few years if the economy and the popular mood seem favorable, the State proposes a bond election to fund several hundred million dollars worth of water and sewer plants. This state support helps towns and cities meet the high cost of pollution control. The call came down that the governor was preparing to propose a bond referendum and wanted to see a plan for the communication campaign to promote the bonds. I drafted a five or six page outline of what should happen and when. This is not a complex public relations matter; the bond vote succeeds because easily 90% of state politicians and city and town councils are for them.
So I drafted my proposal and sent it up the hierarchy on its way to the governor. Probably ten officials in all reviewed the plan. On the way up the chain no one -- assistant secretaries, deputy secretaries, the secretary himself and assorted advisers and experts -- was willing to commit to the plan. Once they heard that the governor liked it, they embraced the plan. Then it was clear to me that these people were making decisions on issues they did not understand. Without the governor's endorsement, they would have judged both the plan and its author defective. It is not necessarily the case that those who outrank you in a hierarchy also outsmart you although they themselves sometimes confuse position on the organization chart with insight. So I decided it was time to move on when I was no longer sure that my ideas would get a fair hearing. With a doctorate one can consult with a government agency, offer insight and suggestions and, if they choose to ignore your ideas, you cash the check and go on with your life. As a bureaucrat you have to stick around and watch the results or decide you no longer care, which is the worst possible outcome.
After a decade away, every so often I think it might be satisfying to re-enter government service, if only for a little while. Surely, with my enhanced knowledge and wisdom I could be more effective and more satisfied than before, I tell myself. Then I come face-to-face with the system and I reconsider.
Here is a case in point. Several months back the North Carolina Department of Transportation proposed to close an underpass in my neighborhood as part of a project to realign a dangerous stretch of interstate (which political influence had helped to mis-design decades before). A public hearing was held; the neighborhood association turned out in force. I heard DOT officials expected a handful, they got 200 intensely interested citizens. Probably 30 residents spoke; all were in opposition to the project. It looked like democracy in action and, although I had run my share of similar meetings as a state employee, I was feeling good about participating as a regular citizen.
At the end of the session several people asked when and how DOT would evaluate this input and reach a decision. The hearing officer, who does this for a living, could not answer the question. We had talked to these people for several hours (many of the DOT brass were there) and the question of what would happen next had not occurred to them. Several citizens expressed incredulity or bemusement at this rapid-onset amnesia. The hearing officer replied that if we did not have a constructive attitude he could close down the hearing. We had had a nice dance with democracy and were pretty sure we had made our point, and then we encounter this officious jerk.
I was heartbroken. Just when I thought state government could do something right I run into this fiasco. My mentor in public relations and life-long friend had been the public affairs director for this same Department of Transportation for eight years in the 80s. He had set up a procedure for running public hearings; the cardinal rule was that you must tell citizens where their comments will go from here. The relevant public relations axiom is that people do not expect to get their way in every dispute but they do expect due process -- an honest explanation of how the system works. So I knew that in its recent past DOT had had in place a very well designed procedure for avoiding this sort of debacle. Yet the organization seemed driven to act in high-handed ways when common sense, if no higher motive, would argue for courtesy. That was a very sad night for me because I concluded that, while my studies tell me that organizational learning is possible, my experience with government tells me that that is not the way to bet.