Review: Michael Lewis’s “Who Is Government?”
by Miles Raymer
In recent weeks, I have joined millions of my fellow Americans who are trying to understand and cope with the overwhelming changes that are sweeping through our sociopolitical landscape. As I pinball between moments of despair, confusion, curiosity, and the occasional glimmer of hope, one of the questions that keeps coming back around is: Who are these thousands of federal employees whose jobs are now gone or at risk? Surely they are humans, flawed and fallible just like the rest of us, but they also probably don’t fit the mold of the “average” American.
I actually know a federal employee who lives in Washington DC, my personal sample size of one. We grew up together and were especially close during our teen years. This friend––let’s call him Brian––was a few years older than me and more than a few years smarter. In many ways he was an intellectual mentor as well as a friend. I have a distinct memory of walking with Brian in our neighborhood and asking if he believed in evolution. He scoffed. “I don’t believe in it,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen.” He then explained an experiment he’d done in biology class that demonstrated how bacteria can rapidly evolve to resist chemical stressors in their environment. I’m not sure why this memory stuck with me, but it captures something essential about Brian’s personality. Seemingly from birth, his intellect was always a sharpened double-edged sword––genuine curiosity adroitly balanced by humorous skepticism.
Brian also has a fascination with the gritty realism of war, accepting conflict and violence as part of the natural order. On another walk, maybe in my late teens or early twenties, I remember making a banal comment about how beautiful the forest was in the hills east of the road that Brian and I grew up on. He scoffed. “All I see is competition,” he said. “So many plants and animals just battling it out for limited resources.” I remember thinking that this was perhaps too dark a view for me to adopt, but also that Brian was absolutely correct. He can always be relied on to bring a different perspective, to challenge sentiments that seem obvious and universal to me. Crucially, Brian’s dismal view of nature appears to generate a strong respect for ethics and honorable action, I assume because he understands that the world can only be a decent place if we choose to make it so. This was one of the reasons I came to love him, one of the reasons that I still love him.
Fast forward a couple decades. While I’ve been noodling around with various professional pursuits, Brian has settled down as a dedicated federal employee. Brian’s a bit of a loner, but as far as I can tell he’s content with that. I wouldn’t say he’s married to his job but he sure seems committed. We still keep in touch. We talk on the phone occasionally, and I get to see him when he comes back to California to visit his folks, who still live just down the road from me. We like discussing video games, politics, economics, and really anything else that comes up. After Trump was re-elected last year, I called Brian up to ask what he thought about it. “Well,” he said, “I can see this going two ways. In one scenario, everyone around Trump works to construct a kind of playpen of mirrors, so Trump can look at his own reflection all day and pretend that he’s king of America. Then outside the playpen the people in his administration will more or less go about business as usual.”
“What’s the other scenario?” I asked.
“Trump starts fucking with the money,” Brian replied. He went on to explain what he meant by this, which included many of the actions that Trump 2.0 has either now taken or seems poised to take. Brian indicated that “fucking with the money” would potentially mean dire consequences for America and the global economy, first among them a level of uncertainty about finance and security that hasn’t been seen in generations. I’m as pissed off as anyone that we’re now living through the opening act of Brian’s second scenario, but as usual he gets credit for being prescient and not pulling any punches.
Is Brian a “typical” federal employee? I honestly have no idea. But there is no doubt in my mind that he’s one of the best Americans I know, one of the best I will ever know. If I had to pick one person from my entire social history to be working for a federal agency, my first choice would be him. Brian’s not a hero in the traditional, dramatic sense, but he has always been and remains a heroic figure in my personal life. So I am filled with sadness when I think about an entire workforce of Brians who now have been cast out of the federal government, or who feel embattled and embittered even as they remain grateful that they have kept their jobs, at least for now.
Michael Lewis––arguably America’s most successful nonfiction writer––has also been wondering what kinds of folks are anonymously grinding way inside the federal workforce. I loved reading Who Is Government?, his recent collection of essays. It features two essays by Lewis and six essays by an august group of other authors, including Geraldine Brooks and Dave Eggers. Most of the essays feature a person, or small group of people, who have done remarkable things such as figuring out how to drastically reduce roof collapses in mines, or tracking cybercriminals so they can be brought to justice. One fascinating offering by John Lanchester, “The Number,” explains the nuances of the Consumer Price Index and its important role in America’s modern economic system. All the essays are engaging, concise, and a pleasure to read.
Although I think this is a terrific little book, I’d like to note a couple things––not really criticisms but limitations of Lewis’s project that bear mentioning. The first is that Who Is Government? is a classic example of cherry picking anecdotes. These people aren’t famous, but I’m sure they’re standouts when compared to the average federal employee. Still, the NBA gets to have its superstars, so why not learn about the LeBron James of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or the Stephen Curry of IRS’s cybercrime unit? Another important caveat is that there are surely ways that the federal government can be made more efficient, including staffing cuts that might be long overdue. This book should not be deployed in support of a blanket argument that the federal government should be allowed to continue business as usual without scrutiny or demands for improvement. But it does serve as a plangent and powerful rejoinder to the all-too-common caricature of the bumbling, lazy federal worker who lives off the taxpayer’s dime without contributing anything of value.
If you are one of the many federal employees––or former federal employees––whose lives have been impacted by the current chaos, please know that there are millions of your fellow citizens who respect you and the work you do. Countless Americans hold love and admiration for friends or family members who have dedicated their careers to the public good, the same way I love and admire Brian. We value your talents, believe that your interest in public service is vital to our nation, and have faith that you’ll continue to find meaningful ways to serve.
We need you now more than ever. Please don’t give up on us.