The Frustrations of Government Service
本文系统梳理了政府官员面临的负面公众态度、利益集团压力、媒体监督等挫败因素，指出这些因素使政府服务变得令人沮丧，并呼吁关注其对人才招募的累积影响。
Public life is like air, according to David Mathews, former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare who now heads the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. We all depend on it, but no one worries about it until it goes bad. It is past time to begin worrying. Signs abound that all is not well with the quality of our public life. public lacks confidence in our governmental and private institutions. Our civic discourse is at times unnecessarily negative and shrill. Voting turnout is shockingly low, especially among the young. and politician -words that could evoke the honorable notion of public service-are used instead in disparaging way by commentators, citizens, and politicians alike. A company in Virginia has manufactured The doll, calling it a product of no redeeming social value. Instruction number six suggests: Try him as paperweight! Place Bureaucrat on stack of papers on your desk, and he will just sit on them. Everyone picks on bureaucrats and politicians-even the bureaucrats and politicians do it. political environment is such that politicians seeking elective office feel that they must attack the very governments that they desire to lead. Inevitably, negative rhetoric about our public servants becomes self-fulfilling prophecy, making it difficult to recruit and maintain high quality people in government. cumulative impact of the negative aspects of the lives of government officials at all levelsnegative public attitudes toward government, demanding interest groups, unrelenting news media, time consuming and rigid decision making procedures, and financial sacrifice-is making government service unnecessarily frustrating and unattractive to many. purpose of cataloging the frustrations of government officials is not to discourage people from going into government service. excitement and stimulation of working on important public policy issues is simply unmatched by private sector activities, according to many individuals who have had both experiences. But for an increasing number of people, life in government seems forbidding. purpose of this essay is to identify, in systematic way, the negative forces that are at work and the particularly perverse and counterproductive manner in which they are coming together in order to focus debate on the question of whether the cumulative costs of