For the love of everything holy, will someone go give this man a job. Some of you may dislike his politics, but there is no doubt he is intelligent and would be a good employee (although cranky, like me, perhaps).
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Anon
John, I am an attorney in a public policy position, and I’d offer Jesse a hand up because he writes well, and that forgives a lot of sins.
But I read his bit a while back about interviewing at Heritage, how awful they were, what a bunch of closed-minded racists they are and so forth, and there’s just no way. Setting aside the usual partisan urge to defend Heritage, in my experience, Heritage scholars are usually people of very good character and quite smart. Heritage’s reputation approaches Brookings’ reputation, at least among the public policy wonks I’ve worked with. And even though Heritage is definitely very conservative, I’ve never heard any serious public policy lawyer or management consultant skewer them as evil or somehow misguided.
I’ve also been following with some amusement Jesse’s recent urge to ridicule Jonah Goldberg, who may or may not be the most popular guy, but whose wife is a well-liked DOJ spokesperson, and quite well respected by at least half of Capitol Hill and a pretty broad swath of government attorneys… that’s not a great job search tactic if you are using your blog to look for work in law or public policy in the D.C. area.
Aside from finding the cited attack pieces wrong according to my subjective experience, there’s just no way that I could put my reputation on the line to extend a hand to Jesse, much as I think he’d be a good addition. A focus on bitter, partisan point scoring and track record don’t just disappear when you apply for a job. Linda Chavez got slammed for her op-ed positions; everybody else is entitled to exactly the same treatment. Tee off at your own risk.
You are free to disbelieve this next statement, but I wouldn’t go out on a limb for a down & dirty partisan who shares my politics. It follows that I won’t do it for somebody who ridicules my conservative beliefs as evil and hopelessly stupid and clueless.
Jesse can have a good laugh about it thinking that I’m just a biased prick, and policy professionals on the left, in a similar position, would think differently, but I don’t believe that’s true.
Simply put, the better your job, the more you are expected to be truly civil, and prove you can disagree without calling the other person nasty names. The knuckleheads on the evening political scream shows act infantile, but adults doing the people’s business work hard to remain civilized even when they strongly disagree. The civil service is supposed to do its objective best, not its partisan best, for the people.
I know whereof I speak. I was initially hired by a panel comprised almost entirely of liberal attorneys. One very liberal attorney on that panel later told me that she knew I was conservative, but didn’t care because she was pretty sure I would do what I was directed to do, and that my even handed discussion of some issues convinced her that my politics wouldn’t override my professional sense of duty. I as a conservative have hired very liberal attorneys and admin staff, including some lefty activists, and the key question for me is “would they say or do something that would compromise the office’s mission?” A smooth liberal activist who is civil, with a light touch, gets the nod in my book over a conservative who goes after liberals hammer and tong, but leaves bleeding corpses in the water. Could Jesse put his hard edge away? Yeah, maybe. But rarely is hiring a clear cut thing; any good job has lots of applicants, and the line between getting hired and getting a rejection letter is pretty thin. In my office, we don’t have room for a hard political edge; we have enough problems coming at us from outside sources.
A good supervisor in a public policy shop worries more about people’s ability to think flexibly about a problem, thinking equally well from a variety of viewpoints, than about politics. This is especially important in law and public policy positions; you have to know how a variety of judges might evaluate a government action if challenged, and how the folks up and down the political chain of command will think about it. You can’t think like other people if your premise is that their way of thinking isn’t even valid.
Partisan mud slinging and demonization is fun and easy, and it’s a great way to be an op-ed writer or a candidate for political office. It isn’t too effective at getting one into a public policy position, and if you get into such a position and treat people the same way you talk about them, you sure wont hold down that job for very long. After all, public servants are supposed to make the best decision in a manner that is not demeaning to any constituents, regardless of politics; nor should public servants make decisions based on which alternative is most closely aligned with party activists’ desires. Sure, politics enters into the consideration, but calling somebody a doody head won’t win an argument in the real world the way it wins the argument on a blog. And anybody who think their party has all the answers… well, people like that belong working as party activists, not as civil servants.