Mondays with Mike: A few good men and women

I wasn’t able to watch the impeachment hearings live, but I have seen selected highlights. Beth was able to listen to some morning testimony live, and she sort of helped me seek out things she thought were significant.

In doing so, she had a take on it all I hadn’t expected: Regardless of the president’s behavior, whether it rose to impeachable, or anything else political, she was inspired.

I didn’t really get it until I listened to parts of the State Department folks. When I did, I understood. These people, despite what anyone wants to smear them as, are true public servants. A lot of their testimony served as a sort of civics lesson in just what the heck the diplomatic corps does. The answer is, a lot, and under very difficult circumstances, working for very different leaders every few years.

We live in an age when skepticism about government has grown from healthy to malignant. Hard scrutiny about the limits of what government does, and oversight of government—local, state, and federal—is absolutely a good thing.

But dissing every one and every thing in the government is a cop out. It abdicates the whole idea that we hold some responsibility for the conduct of our government. It doesn’t delineate between the things government can and should do, and those things that perhaps, despite the best intentions, aren’t practical. As such, we get into binary thinking—all good, or all bad. And we never have the constructive conversation and debate.

I once worked at a wine importer and distributor, and one of the women I worked with was whip-smart, she had gone to Princeton, was making a good buck, and…she decided to join the Peace Corps. After that experience, she joined the State Department, and has repeatedly moved to points around the globe for her work. She’s now in the United Arab Emirates, reviewing visa requests to visit the United States. Not an unimportant task in that part of the world.

She’s proud of her work, completely apolitical in her observations about it, and I’m glad she’s on the case.

There are a lot of good people in government—we heard a few of them testify last week, and thanks to my friend in the UAE, I know it for a fact.