In Cold Blood vs. The New Effective Public Manager

Well I’m up late and I’ve had a hellish weekend and so I’m surfing around and I find this little gem. I really needed a laugh today and this was just what the doctor ordered.

From ilikecheese at dKos…

I’m a liberal. I’m 20-something. I’m a Democrat. I think that George W. Bush is the worst that could have ever happened to me, my friends, and my generation. I worked in government. I’m leaving government.

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I did what I could. I gave everything I could. I registered more voters in one small county in a state than other people did in counties that were fifty times the size of my county. I went to school at one of the best schools in the world in public administration to get my masters. And then I realized that my constitution couldn’t take politics anymore, and my soul couldn’t take public administration anymore.

And why, you ask, can my soul not take public administration anymore? Public administration, you might imagine, was never seen as a riveting field. But I saw the importance it could have for people — that it could change people’s lives. That veterans could get the money they needed, that federal workers could get the medical help when they were injured on the job — if only someone would make this thing work.

And then I had to read this stuff. Man, soulsucking is an understatement. But I kept going. For two years. But then I realized, why? What is it that I’m going to do that’s going to keep me interested? The only thing keeping me going is anger at what I see in the government. I don’t love this. I hate it. I hate what I see. And I’m leaving, for my own sake, before I’m consumed by it.

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So I’m switching to the much less materially lucrative but much more personally lucrative career of literature. And I thought I’d share a rant I decided to have below to show you why I’m doing this.

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So here’s a prose competition between Truman Capote and a couple of PA scholars. You decide what you want to study! Literature or public administration?

In Cold Blood vs. The New Effective Public Manager

Round One, First line:

Cohen and Eimicke, first sentence: “There is a crisis of confidence in government in the United States.”

Capote, first sentence: “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’