Monthly Archives: April 2007

citizen liaison offices

(In Massachusetts) Colleagues and I are looking for policy ideas that would support civic participation. In 1994, in a report for the White House Domestic Policy Council, Paul Light recommended the creation of a “Citizen Liaison Office” (CLO) within each major federal agency. A CLO would review existing procedures and programs for barriers to citizen participation. It would likewise review proposed laws and regulations. Each CLO would provide training for employees of its own agency on how to work with citizens–not individual citizens, viewed as clients or constituents, but organized groups that address problems assigned to the agency. For instance, EPA collaborates effectively with communities and associations that conduct environmental monitoring. Finally, all the CLOs would meet as an inter-agency task force to share ideas and work out government-wide policies for enhancing citizens’ involvement. Today, some of the most promising of such policies would take advantage of computer networks. For example, citizens could participate online in rulemaking, using one website for all agencies. They would not just submit individual comments on proposed regulations, but would participate in a “wiki”-like process that would add value.

Light asked “whether government really needs another bureaucratic unit, more paperwork, and more reports.” As a true expert on the federal civil service and public administration, he concluded that the benefits of adding CLOs would be well worth the price. The same idea could be applied in local government, as recommended in 1993 by the National Commission on the State and Local Public Service.

too much coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy

The amount of coverage has been staggering–dozens of stories per day in the top national newspapers, nightly broadcast news programs that are lengthened by half an hour, 24-hour repetitions of the same information on cable news, even a blow-by-blow account in the “Kid’s Post” section of the Washington Post, which my 7-year-old reads. I first found out about the Blacksburg tragedy because a student TV news crew stopped me on the street to ask my opinion. This is a global phenomenon: Le Monde and the BBC also led with Cho Seung-hui’s picture when I looked.

It’s a choice to devote so much space and time to those 33 deaths. Bombers killed 158 in US-occupied Baghdad on Wednesday. Nigeria, the biggest country in Africa, saw violence connected to its presidential vote. Comparisons are odious; they imply that one doesn’t care about particular victims and that human lives can be counted and weighed. I do sympathize with the Blacksburg victims and their families. I sympathize because I have been told their stories in detail; but there are many other stories that I could have been told–other tragedies, or (for that matter) other narratives that are important but not tragic.

Perhaps the Virginia Tech victims deserve sympathy from all of us, but I suspect they would prefer less attention. I find it hard to see how the deserve something they don’t want.

One reason to tell the Virginia Tech story in detail is to provide us with the information we might need to act as voters and members of various communities. For instance, I work at a university much like Virginia Tech and could agitate for new policies in my institution. But it is generally a bad idea to act on the basis of extremely rare events. There have been about 40 mass shootings in the USA. During the period when those crimes have occurred, something like half a billion total people have been alive in America. That means that 0.000008 percent of the population commits mass shootings. There cannot be a general circumstance that explains why someone does something so rare. The availability of weapons, mental illness, video games–none of these prevalent factors can “explain” something that in 99.999992 percent of cases does not happen. (Bayes’ theorem seems relevant here, but I cannot precisely say why.)

It is foolish to use such rare events to make policy at any level–from federal laws to school rules. For instance, if lots of people carried concealed weapons, there is some chance that the next mass killer would be stopped after he had shot some of his victims. But millions of people would have to carry guns, and that would cause all kinds of other consequences. The day after the Blacksburg killings, two highly trained Secret Service officers were injured on the White House grounds because one of them accidentally discharged his gun. Imagine how many times such accidents would happen per year if most ordinary college students packed weapons in order to prevent the next Blacksburg.

The last paragraph was a rebuttal to those who want to use Cho Seung-hui as an argument for carrying concealed weapons. But it would be equally mistaken to favor gun control because it might prevent mass shootings. Maybe gun control is a good idea, but not because it would somewhat lower the probability of staggeringly rare events. Its other consequences (both positive and negative) are much more significant.

If obsessive coverage of a particular tragedy does not help us to govern ourselves or make wise policies, it does reduce our sense of security and trust. It reinforces our belief that “current events” and “public affairs” are mostly about senseless acts of violence. It plants the idea that one can become spectacularly famous by killing other people. These are not positive consequences.

It is moving that some students have started a “reach out to a loner” campaign on the Internet. They are trying to respond constructively to something that they have been told is highly important. Imagine what they might accomplish if they turned their attention to the prison population, the high-school dropout problem, or even ordinary mental illness.

The November Fifth Coalition

The November Fifth Coalition has just been launched as a collaboration among several major civic organizations (with others to be added to the website very soon). November Fifth is the day after the election. We mean to say that the campaign is not a competition that will end when the votes are cast; it is part of an ongoing process by which the whole American polity governs itself.

Unless we and others intervene effectively, the 2008 campaign will follow a sadly predictable script. Candidates will present themselves as the solution to our problems and will blame our current difficulties on rival politicians. Policy ideas will all be state-centered; candidates will argue for expanding, cutting, or reorganizing the government, as if the state were the only actor. The press will treat the campaign as a horse race, as if the most important question were: Who will win? Reporters will provide some stories about “issues,” but again, it will all be about the government.

Neither journalists on the campaign beat nor candidates will pay much attention to citizen-centered work, such as watershed restorations, land trusts, community planning exercises, charter schools, public arts projects, and service-learning. If they propose policies involving “citizenship,” these will be rather thin: for example, they may promise to increase the number of volunteers.

Citizen-centered work is increasingly robust, diverse, and sophisticated. It is addressing increasingly serious and large-scale issues, from global warming to the reconstruction of the Gulf. The November Fifth Coalition aims to draw public attention to this movement. Candidates should stop running as potential saviors and instead explain–concretely–how they will collaborate with responsible civic groups and movements to address our real problems.

At this moment, there is not a clear mechanism by which an individual can joint November Fifth. But please email me if you are interested and I will look for ways to include you.

Gonzalo’s commonwealth

Gonzalo is the most virtuous character in Shakespeare’s Tempest, a man “whose honor cannot / Be measured or confined” (v,1,135-6). He arrives on Prospero’s island in the company of vile politicians who have organized a coup and are prepared, some of them, to kill for even more power. They mock him after he makes his speech in favor of his ideal society:

I’ th’ commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things, for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation; all men idle, all

And women too, but innocent and pure;

No sovereignty —

SEBASTIAN: Yet he would be king on ‘t

ANTONIO: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.

GONZALO: All things in common nature should produce

Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony,

Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine

Would I not have; but nature should bring forth

Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,

To feed my innocent people.

SEBASTIAN: No marrying ‘mong his subjects?

ANTONIO: None, man, all idle: whores and knaves.

GONZALO: I would with such perfection govern, sir,

T’ excel the Golden Age. (ii,1,161ff.)

Gonzalo sounds like Rousseau–and has Rousseau’s problem, acutely noted by the wicked Sebastian and Antonio in their prose interruption to his blank verse. Gonzalo would need power to create his society without power. When he says, “I would … execute all things” he implies that he would be sovereign, yet there would be no sovereignty in his anarchistic commonwealth. He must force men to be free.

Rousseau would not be born for another century. But Gonzalo quotes another Frenchman, Montaigne, whose essay “On Savages” described Native Americans as happy and free. There were two “savage” natives on Prospero’s island when he arrived (although Caliban was actually an earlier immigrant). Prospero quickly made both of them his slaves, thus acting “contrary” to Gonzalo. Also against Gonzalo’s principles, Prospero demands “service,” charges people with “treason” and “felony,” and controls his daughter’s marriage “contract” and “succession.” Prospero seems to be the hero of the play, which is presented as a comedy. Yet modern readers mostly recoil at his treatment of Caliban, his paternalism toward Miranda, and his slave Ariel’s obsequiousness.

Yet Prospero is the hero, I think, and Shakespeare’s vision is a dark one. Gonzalo may be appealing, but he is ineffectual. He has served the usurping Duke Antonio and supported the law of that regime (see i.1,30). He does nothing to overthrow Antonio or create a Golden Age. Prospero was also originally an idealist. He shunned “temporal royalties” in favor of his library, becoming a harmless scholar (i,2,131). He wanted to “abjure” his “rough” powers, as he finally does in Act V. Unfortunately, power did not vanish in Milan because Prospero refused to exercise it. His own brother and confederates overthrew him and sent him into a dangerous exile with only his child.

Then he came to a place with no sovereignty, a desert island. He had his books. Otherwise, there was no property, no crime, no border, no master or slave. But now Prospero understood that he could not simply abjure power without putting himself in grave danger. He would have to be master or mastered. Thus he made himself dictator of his new “dukedom” until, by means of an elaborate scheme, he was able to restore justice. When he finally arranges for a lawful succession, his own story is over. “And thence retire me to my Milan, where / My every third thought shall be my grave” (v,1,378-9).

Prospero wishes to avoid ruling–as does Lear at the beginning of that play. Gonzalo describes a society without rulers–just like Lear’s vision once he is out on the heath (iv,6). But Gonzalo is actually nothing but a tool of a despotic state. Prospero realizes he must use rough power to restore order and imperfect justice before he dies. Shakespeare takes that to be a happy ending.

whom does a White House reporter represent?

Another person who spoke on Saturday at Penn State was David E. Sanger, the chief White House correspondent of the New York Times. After his speech, I asked him whom he thought he represented when he rode on Air Force One or sat in the White House briefing room. He replied, “You always represent your readers.” I asked him who he wished his readers were. I was wondering, for instance, whether he would like to reach (and therefore “represent”) a cross-section of the whole national population, if that were possible. He replied that Times readers are always going to be unusual in some respects. They have a high median level of education and tend to have especially enjoyed their own college experiences. He argued that skew was acceptable as long as everyone can get access to the Times, which is easy now via the website.

That’s a plausible answer. It’s better than claiming that the Times only serves the truth. Despite its slogan (“All the News that’s Fit to Print”), the newspaper obviously makes choices about what stories to cover and whom to interview, based on value-judgments about what is most important. Sanger had conceded that point in earlier comments.

I can imagine a reporter saying that he represents no one, or only his employer. But that would raise questions about why he should have access to the president of the United States. I can also imagine a New York Times reporter saying that she represents “the American people.” That’s consistent with the Times’ image as an objective source of information for any citizen (regardless of creed, region, or party) who wants to make independent decisions. I’ve previously quoted Adolph Ochs, who said, when he bought the Times in 1896, that he intended to “give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that is parliamentary in good society, and give it early, if not earlier, than it can be learned through any other reliable medium; to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect, or interest involved; to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.” That’s a high ideal, and it reflects a kind of implicit contract between the whole public and the Times’ reporters. That contract has come into question with recent scandals, but I don’t think that tighter ethical rules would fully resolve the problem. The Times cannot represent the whole American people if the 1.1 million people who buy it are skewed by class, ideology, and region. It could struggle to make its readership nationally representative, but that would probably require a change of tone, topics, and perspective. Perhaps it is best to say, as Sanger did, that he simply represents his readers and welcomes anyone to join their company.