We live in interesting times...

It's no secret that these are hard times, even for young people who have done everything the right way. Still, this testimony, gleaned from Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish, has to be sobering for anyone about to enter the current job market.

"I have in my hand a smoking tweet" --Senator Richard J. Durbin

Here in the capital of the free world we tend to take ourselves a little too seriously.

So here's a lusty shout-out to Dick Durbin for finding a clever way to complain about the Republicans' stalling tactics on the health care and Defense appropriations fronts. Politico has the whole story.

The incriminating tweet in question came from South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.

Health Care Reform: None of the Above

In the United States, we spend a lot more money, per capita, on health care than any other country on Earth. Given the widespread belief that Americans enjoy “the best health care in the world,” the actual results, as those are conventionally measured, are pretty mediocre. (See the results of a Congressional Research Service study of health care spending in some thirty OECD countries here.)

And so, about one year ago, we elected a new president who promised change on this and many other public policy fronts. It now appears likely that sometime during the next few weeks both houses of Congress will approve—along overwhelmingly partisan lines—a bill that will allow President Obama to declare victory in the battle to “bend the curve” of skyrocketing health care costs.

I must confess that I am starting to be, as Mark Twain liked to say, harassed by doubts about all this. And I am not alone. A story on page A6 of the December 16 issue of the Washington Post reports that a majority of Americans (51%) say that they “oppose the proposed changes to the health-care system being developed by Congress and the Obama administration.” Fully 66% say that they believe passage of the bill will increase the federal budget deficit.

But Democratic leaders in Congress appear undaunted, even by nay-saying on the part of the former head of the Democratic National Committee, Dr. Howard Dean, who argues that the Senate bill would “do more harm than good.” Dean urges defeat of the pending legislation on the grounds that it is “an insurance company’s dream.”

Evidently, the bill also is a pharmaceutical company’s dream. According to Dana Milbank, the industry is adamant in its insistence that Americans continue “to pay up to 10 times the prices Canadians and Europeans pay for identical medication, often produced in the same facilities by the same manufacturers.”

This is one of those times (there are many) when I’m glad that Washington Buckeyes have not been allotted a seat in the United States Senate. I don’t think I could hold my nose and vote for this bill. On the other hand, I can’t imagine voting to kill the bill along with Howard Dean and all the Senate Republicans, who seem to like the status quo in U.S. health care spending. Is a puzzlement.

The most thoughtful critique I have seen from the contrary-minded is that of Charles Krauthammer, who is not a conventional Republican, at least on domestic issues. Krauthammer proposes a tripartite approach to real reform: (1) overhaul U.S. tort law, (2) allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines, and (3) tax employer-provided health insurance. Pursuing this approach would make a lot of people unhappy, including (1) trial lawyers, (2), the insurance industry, (3) everyone who pays insurance premiums. In addition, abandoning all the present bills and starting from scratch would take time.

On the other hand, it would leave the best parts of the existing system—Medicare, for example—alone. And Krauthammer’s sausages could be produced one at a time, linked by experience.

Iran's Nukes: A Foreign Policy Simulation

Graham Allison, head of the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is the author of one of the classic studies of public policy making, published in book form as Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). While provocative and theoretically important, Allison's retrospective analysis of the Cuban missile crisis doesn't necessarily help us understand contemporary foreign policy situations.

Consider, for example, the challenge posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose geopolitical situation has been vastly improved, albeit inadvertently, by the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran seems determined to develop its own nuclear weapons. Israel's Binjamin Netanyahu seems equally determined to prevent that from happening by conducting a surgical strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. So far, the U.S. has managed to restrain our Israeli allies, but we have been less successful in convincing Russia and China to support strong U.N. sanctions against Iran.

Allison has recently developed a set of exercises designed to simulate the way that Iran's quest to join the nuclear club is likely to play out over the next twelve months. The lesson, according to David Ignatius in today's Post, is that "the simulated world of December 2010 looks ragged and dangerous."

Hasta la vista

The autumn 2009 edition of the Washington Academic Internship Program is not quite over yet (policy papers are due tomorrow), but things are winding down pretty fast. Yesterday we enjoyed our farewell lunch at La Loma, and we all removed our sombreros right before the photographer pressed the shutter. From left to right, Laura Allen, Liz Hagan, Josh Kramer, David Young, Sam Rose, Terry Traster, Jessica Meeker, Amy Ovecka, Chelsea Rider, Ken Kolson

Terra Cotta Warriors

The terra cotta warriors are in town! Well, a handful of them are here, anyway, and they will be displayed at the National Geographic Society through March 31. That means that the current class of Glenn Fellows, who I suspect are fully occupied with their policy papers at the moment, probably will not get to see the exhibit. On the other hand, next quarter's class can be making their plans now. Order your tickets here.

Blake Gopnik has a review in today's Post, which boils down to the idea that "they look better in situ." Well, duh. (Don't get me wrong, Gopnik is always worth reading.)

State Dinner Attendees

I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for White House guest lists. Politico has published the list of VIPs who attended last night's state dinner in honor of India on the occasion of the visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur. Close scrutiny of the list reveals at least one couple that deserve to be singled out by the Washington Buckeye: Jay Goyal and Kiran Goyal of Mansfield. Mr. Goyal (D-73rd District) is majority whip of the Ohio House of Representatives.

The adjacent photo is by Charles Dharapak of the Associated Press.

Not so Fast...

One of the most entertaining aspects of life in Washington, D.C., is the way that events refuse to unfold in exactly the way we expect them to. The already contentious issue of healthcare reform, for example, has been complicated by the report of a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that no one had every heard of before this week. It seems that mammography and self-examination, along with prostate cancer screening, may not be as good an idea as we'd all thought. This is the kind of material that Post columnist Dana Milbank knows how to milk for all it's worth. So to speak. Read all about it here.

The cartoon is the work of the Post's Tom Toles.

The Allure and Folly of Projecting Current Trends

While the Glenn Fellows are busy producing drafts of their policy papers, the Washington Buckeye is catching up on his reading in the International Economic Bulletin, a publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The current issue features a story, “The G20 in 2050” by Uri Dadush and Bennett Stancil, that projects current trends into the middle of the twenty-first century. These trends show India overtaking China as the world’s most populous nation by 2031, and China passing the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2032. Click here to read the story and to play with the dynamic graph, “Projected G20 Economic Growth 2009-2050,” that shows these trends unfolding over the next forty years. Click on the “play” arrow to watch the universe as it unfurls. The balloons representing particular nations even expand or contract depending on population trends. Very cool!

And yet, and yet. . . . The problem with this kind of analysis is that we know even before we begin that the underlying ceteris paribus clause—all other things being held constant—is, simply, false. All other things will NOT be constant over the next forty years. We know that, and yet how else are we going to generate information that will help us plan for the future? We have to do it, even though all of us, and particularly those of us who pumped their IRAs full of stocks during the pre-2007 bubble, recognize the folly of projecting current trends.

There is some good news here: in 2050 the United States will still have—by far—the world’s highest per capita GDP. That is, if current trends continue. . . .

It Takes a Village and a Kind-Hearted Bartender

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) made a lively presentation at a WAIP-WISH policy salon last night. In addition to the autumn 2009 class of Glenn Fellows, three of whom happen to reside in Rep. Fudge's 11th Congressional district, the audience of approximately 30 included a number of participants in the Congressional Black Caucus's fellows program. Lynn Jennings and Ervin Johnson of the CBCF and Dan Lewis of WISH also were in the audience.

Rep. Fudge talked movingly about her youth on Cleveland's east side, where she was raised by a single mother with significant assistance from church members--and later, while she was attending Shaker Heights schools--from a kindly restauranteur who provided lunch every day because her mother was at work and the school she attended had no cafeteria.

In her remarks about public policy, Rep. Fudge made an eloquent case for taking care not to strive for perfection in legislation. As she put it, we mustn't "let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

The Congresswoman is pictured above with members of the audience and with her three Glenn Fellow constituents--from left to right, Josh Kramer, Liz Hagan, and Jessica Meeker.

WAIP Policy Salon with Rep. Marcia Fudge

In the fall of 2008, the Glenn School’s Washington Academic Internship Program (WAIP) moved to new offices on Capitol Hill and contracted with Washington Intern Student Housing (WISH) to provide living accommodations for our students. This was more than a mere move across town. It was a relocation to the epicenter of lawmaking and adjudication, and to the part of town that is home to countless university-administered internship programs that have in the past been so many ships passing in the night.

More or less immediately, the WAIP-WISH coalition set out to build bridges to the many universities that call Capitol Hill home. We began by sponsoring a “policy salon” that meets on weekday evenings, usually in the WISH-owned classroom at 239 Massachusetts Avenue. WISH general manager Dan Lewis donates the classroom space, while WAIP has taken the lead in finding speakers. Prominent among those who have lent their time and expertise to the joint venture are Glenn School faculty members Jason Seligman, Trevor Brown, and Andy Keeler.

So far this year, we have enjoyed contributions from several Washington-based university programs, including Johns Hopkins University (David Bernstein Professor of Political Science Benjamin Ginsberg), the University of New Mexico (Professor Richard Schaefer), and the University of Missouri School of Journalism (Professor Charles N. Davis). This fall alone, we have had a number of lively presentations from OSU alumni and friends: Jerome Pierson of NIH spoke about the U.S. response to the Pandemic H1N1 virus; Christine Kontra, legislative assistant to Rep. Steve LaTourette, lectured on the pros and cons of earmarking; attorney Ted Van Der Meid spoke about Congressional ethics; retired AP foreign correspondent Myron Belkind provided advice to budding journalists; and Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi talked about how Ohio State was in many ways the crucible of his political career.

It would be stretching the truth to say that the WAIP-WISH partnership has been an overnight sensation, but now that we are well into Year 2, we can claim one triumph in institutional collaboration, and that is the loyal participation of a third partner, the Congressional Black Caucus Fellowship program. Thanks to CBC staffers Ervin Johnson and Lynn Jennings, CBC fellows have attended almost all policy salon events. Last year, the CBCF arranged a presentation by House Whip James E. Clyburn (D-SC). This evening, our speaker will be Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who represents Ohio’s 11th House district, which covers downtown Cleveland and its eastern suburbs. Rep. Fudge, an OSU alumna, will be addressing a group that includes three Glenn Fellows who are residents of her district: Liz Hagan, Cleveland Heights; Joshua Kramer, Shaker Heights; and Jessica Meeker, Lyndhurst.

from today's Washington Post:

ROTC for civilian service
By E.J. Dionne Jr.Monday, November 16, 2009

Imagine a time when government work was exciting, widely admired and much sought-after.
It seems an outlandish thought at a moment when you cannot turn on your television without hearing government spoken of as almost an alien creature. It is cast as far removed from the lives of average Americans and more likely to destroy the achievements of private citizens than to accomplish anything worthwhile.

True, we don't apply our anti-government sentiments to at least one group of Americans who draw government paychecks: our men and women in uniform. All the polls show they are, deservedly, held in high esteem. But civilians who do the daily work of government are more likely to be referred to as "bureaucrats," "timeservers," and various unprintable names than as public servants.

This has not always been the American way. There were important eras in our history when citizens in large numbers were drawn to government service with a sense of mission and exhilaration. The New Deal was certainly such a time, as were the days of the New Frontier and (though it is unjustly derided now) the Great Society.

They came in part -- take note, President Obama -- because they were inspired by leaders who made it a point to call them into government. Caroline Kennedy has said that when she was growing up, "hardly a day went by when someone didn't come up to us and say: 'Your father changed my life. I went into public service because he asked me.' "

But inspiration is not enough. The military, after all, does not rely solely on patriotic feelings to build its force, and neither should the civilian parts of government. One of the most powerful incentives the military has is the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, which offers assistance to those seeking higher education. It's time for a civilian ROTC.

That's the idea of a bipartisan group of senators and House members, who are proposing to create a Roosevelt Scholars program, named after Teddy Roosevelt. Reps. David Price (D-N.C.) and Mike Castle (R-Del.) have introduced a bill in the House, and a similar measure is expected in the Senate this week from Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio).
Although there is sentiment to include undergraduates in the program, the House bill is aimed at graduate students because the federal government has a special demand for highly qualified employees who are otherwise attracted (and heavily recruited) by the private sector. In exchange for generous scholarships in fields such as engineering, information technology, foreign languages and public health, the scholars would commit to three to five years of service in an agency of the federal government.

"With the aging of the boomers and those who responded to Kennedy's call to service, we need to replenish the government workforce," says Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service.

Stier, a one-man evangelizing squad on behalf of government service, notes that the government must fill 273,000 "mission-critical" positions in the next three years. This will require vast improvements in the way government recruits and a new willingness on its part to invest in its workforce.

The military, Stier says, gets roughly 40 percent of its officer corps through the ROTC. It makes sense to undertake a comparable investment in the civil service.
In the small and underappreciated world of those who care passionately about improving government's performance and prestige, there are competing visions of how to achieve this. One group of activists and legislators has been pushing to create a public service academy, modeled after the military academies, to prepare a new generation of leaders in government.
It's a good idea and would send another powerful signal that government work is and should be valued. But with the extraordinary constraints on the federal budget, the prospects of the large investment that would be required to build a new institution are not exactly rosy. A civilian ROTC would be a good first step. The Roosevelt program would have the benefit of drawing on the entire higher education system's capacity to produce specialists.

The Roosevelt program could also be an antidote to two debilitating trends in our politics. It would push back against the tendency of politicians to deride government (an odd habit, since politicians are themselves engaged in government service). And it might open the way for a bipartisan achievement at a time when such endeavors are in very short supply.

Dr. Gee Recognized by TIME Magazine

I'm still trying to figure out what it all means, and to decide whether our charismatic president should be flattered or revolted by the fawning attention of TIME magazine.

Maybe it's worth noting that TIME has chosen to honor the CEOs of institutions that are, for the most part, big, public, and relatively unglamorous. What are we to make of the fact that the Ivy League was shut out of TIME's exclusive society of college presidents? And what does it mean that New England scored only one hit--Middlebury College, which is far from being the most illustrious school in America's Brain Basket. Is there something about the Ivies that inhibits executive leadership? If so, how does that manifest itself? And why doesn't the failure of executive leadership in the Ivies--and at other prestigious institutions, such as Oberlin, Kenyon, and the University of Chicago--somehow make its way into the inscrutable annual rankings of U.S. News and World Reports?

What is TIME trying to say about the executive talent nurtured or recruited by institutions such as Ohio State (and also the University of Michigan, let us hasten to add)? And why do TIME's executive success stories emanate fom schools that have endured unique challenges, such as Tulane, and institutions with notably proletarian pedigrees, such as the University of Maryland Baltimore County, the University of Texas at Brownsville, and Miami-Dade College?

Inquiring minds want to know the answers to these questions about rankings and celebrity, about the rise of the masses and what the great sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto, called the circulation of the elites. In the meantime, let's extend hearty congratulations to Dr. Gee and prepare to enjoy the ride.

Today's Politico declares three Ohio Democrats--Mary Jo Kilroy, Steve Driehaus, and Zack Space--politically vulnerable due to their votes on healthcare reform. Read the story here.

A Bipartisan Moment on Capitol Hill

Last night, the Washington Academic Internship Program of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs made a modest contribution to the spirit of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill by hosting a reception in honor of the autumn 2009 class of Glenn Fellows:

• Liz Hagan, Cleveland Heights (Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)



• Joshua Kramer, Shaker Heights (OSU Office of Federal Relations)



• Jessica Meeker, Lyndhurst (Human Rights First)



• Amy Ovecka, Canton (Department of Justice, International Affairs Department, Criminal Division)



• Chelsea Rider, Marysville (Free the Slaves)



• Samuel Rose, Columbus (U.S. Business and Industry Council)



• Terry Traster, Amherst (Office of U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown)



• David Young, Columbus (Global Resources Center, Gelman Library)

Laura Allen, WAIP Administrative Associate, and I were pleased to convey greetings from Dr. Charles Wise, Director of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. We also were delighted that other members of the Ohio State family were able to join us, including Dick Stoddard, Associate Vice President of Government Relations; Stacy Rastauskas, Assistant Vice President, Federal Relations; and Tammy Parker, Director of Development, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

As we had hoped, the reception proved to be a great opportunity for mixing with a number of former Glenn Fellows, as well as past and present internship supervisors and participants in the WAIP mentoring program.

Senator Glenn, who had just come from a reception honoring Vice President Joe Biden as this year’s recipient of the Annie Glenn Award, said that the Washington Academic Internship Program was central to the Glenn School’s mission and to the cultivation of public service as he and Mrs. Glenn conceive of it. Senator Glenn then introduced Representative Patrick J. Tiberi, a Republican who represents Ohio’s 12th district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In his remarks, Congressman Tiberi emphasized the vital role that The Ohio State University—not only through formal coursework, but particularly through the marching band—played in his education and in the development of his nascent interest in public service. Rep. Tiberi is the son of Italian immigrants and the first person in his family to graduate from high school. He used his own biography (as well as that of President Barack Obama) as evidence that America continues to be a land of opportunity. He is Ohio’s only member of the powerful House Ways and Means committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member on the Select Revenue Subcommittee. In that capacity, Rep. Tiberi said that he makes a point of reaching across the aisle to work with Democratic colleagues in the House.

Hey, it's a start.

Ethics Orgy in Congress

The Glenn Fellows had a thorough briefing last week on Congressional ethics, delivered by an expert on the subject, Ted Van Der Meid. It was just in the nick of time, as it turns out.





"Dozens in Congress Under Inquiry," the lead story in yesterday's Post read. It seems that a low-level staffer--let us hope it was not an intern--was responsible for a breach of security that allowed public access to a secret report of the House Ethics Committee. Anyone who knows anything about how Washington, D.C., works knew what would happen next: the staffer in question was fired. Yes, the low-level Munchkin is toast, dead meat, roadkill. The republic is once again secure.





An accompanying story, "Seven on Defense Panel Scrutinized," focused on the practice of "earmarking" and how it has comprimised members of the House Appropriations Committee, the subject of last week's speaker, OSU alumna Christine Kontra, an aide in the office of Rep. Steve La Tourette (R-Ohio). According to the Post, both the House Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics are looking into questionable activities involving PMA, a lobbying firm with close ties to Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa) and other appropriators, including Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio). The revelation is regrettable, because most ethics inquiries result in exoneration--or gentle wrist-slaps, at most. That's why they're supposed to be kept confidential. Thanks to the leak, seven House members, deservingly or not, have had their reputations besmirched.

The pity, as Ms. Kontra explained at our policy salon, is that one legislator's "pork" is another legislator's "bacon," which is why earmarking is not likely to go away any time soon. And if we are to consider Congress a "broken branch," we should recognize that it has been in that state for a very long time. Could it be that we have simply become a lot more squeamish over time?

November 2 update: While we're on the subject of corruption and Congress, you might find this Timothy Noah piece (from Slate, May 24, 2005) arguing for abolition of the Senate filibuster an interesting take on everybody's favorite Frank Capra film, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

November 6 update: The Hill reports that Marcy Kaptur is fighting back.

The Difference between Bacon and Pork

This little piece in today’s Post made me think of Ted Van Der Meid's presentation on Congressional Ethics earlier this week:

The last time we saw Elizabeth Kucinich, the gorgeous redhead was on her husband's arm as he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination. That didn't pan out, so Rep. Dennis Kucinich went back to Congress and she went back to her work as a monetary policy wonk.

Now she's back in the spotlight, this time as the new director of public affairs for the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Kucinich was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to drum up support for the Great Ape Protection Act, which would phase out invasive medical research on chimpanzees. "For me, it's a moral issue, about practicing good science and moving with the times," she told our colleague Marissa Newhall. The longtime animal-rights advocate wants to end federal funding involving chimps -- which gets into the tricky business of, well, lobbying her husband and his colleagues.

So the couple met with ethics officials Wednesday morning. "We want to make sure everything we do is absolutely by the book, and it's a thick book," she said. Most of her work will be off the Hill, so she's not required to register as a lobbyist. But she'll
make a few personal appeals in Washington -- not lobbying, mind you, but "educational awareness around a particular bill."

The distinction between educational awareness and lobbying sounds a little like the difference between bacon and pork. Well, never mind.

The Many Faces of Public Service

Today’s Post has a story, replete with graphs that even Joel Best would like, about how U.S. ambassadorial appointments are used by grateful presidents to reward major donors. It turns out, according to Al Kamen, who writes “In the Loop,” that the grandees so honored have a marked preference for service in Western Europe and the Caribbean. Imagine that.

Luckily, that leaves a somewhat shorter queue for the less glamorous posts, of which there are many between, say, Sofia and Kabul, or Astana and Luanda. Kamen, citing data gathered by the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents America’s professional diplomatic corps, estimates that a quarter to a third of U.S. ambassadorial posts are reserved for donors and cronies. Note Kamen’s reference to Larry Lawrence, a former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland (one of the most succulent of the plums). His is a most fascinating story, in which Arlington National Cemetery features prominently, if only momentarily.

Probably the most sensational case of a diplomatic career originating outside the “merit system”—at least as that would be defined by OPM, which is scrupulous about such things—is that of Pamela Churchill Harriman. If you’re like me, you’ll discover from her Wikipedia entry just how boring your life has been. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Greek Revival, Indian Summer

The Glenn Fellows toured northern Virginia on a gorgeous October day, inspiring speculation at one point about the etymological origins of the term "Indian summer." At such times, one reaches--cautiously, to be sure--for Wikipedia. Here's the link. I lean toward the explanation that stresses the late harvesting of squash and other crops associated with Indians in the northeast.

We also had some lessons in architectural history along the way. Carlyle House, in Old Town Alexandria, is the fulfillment of the ambitions of an English gentleman of the Georgian era. Only fifty years later, George Washington Parke Custis was building Arlington House, a Greek temple, part of early-nineteenth century effort to express the distinctiveness of American cultural values.

Photos, from top to bottom: the Glenn Fellows in front of Arlington House; the Greek Temple at Paestum, Italy; the Glenn Fellows at Arlington Cemetery, a Roman Revival city in the background.

The Road Not Taken

The October 15 issue of the Washington Post featured a story, “From Civil War to Civil Rights,” on the 150th anniversary this week of John Brown’s raid on the armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The author, Michael E. Ruane, argues that Harpers Ferry is a complex tourist destination—and as such well suited for our times—because John Brown was simultaneously a freedom fighter and a terrorist. He's right. It is as easy to understand why Brown is celebrated as an abolitionist martyr as it is to relate to the rage that animated those who hanged him. Ruane does a nice job, too, of extolling the virtues of Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, which has turned this town of 307 souls into one of this region’s best day trips.

Everyone knows that Harpers Ferry was the overture to an American tragedy, the Civil War. What isn’t as widely known is that the town played a key role in civil rights history. In 1881, Frederick Douglass delivered a moving eulogy to John Brown. In 1906, Storer College, a historically black institution in Harpers Ferry, hosted what W.E.B. Dubois called “one of the greatest meetings that American Negroes ever held.” Storer College, ironically enough, expired in 1955, a victim of Brown v. Board of Education.

I hope that those who come this way again will take the road that leads to Harpers Ferry.

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.

Historic Sites in Northern Virginia

Here are some links that might enhance the value of a field trip to Arlington and Alexandria, which originally were part of the national capital district:

• Arlington National Cemetery: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/


• Custis-Lee Mansion, tp://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/6/hh6d.htm



• United States Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima statue): http://www.nps.gov/archive/gwmp/usmc.htm



• Carlyle House: http://www.nvrpa.org/parks/carlylehouse/index.php

Anyone interested in doing more on his or her own should consider visiting the Lee-Fendall House at 614 Oronoco Street: http://www.leefendallhouse.org/, and the George Washington Masonic Memorial: http://www.gwmemorial.org/index.php. Both are in Alexandria.

General Petraeus Is a Tough Act to Follow

Greg Jaffe had an interesting piece, called "Obama Wanted a Petraeus. Buyer Beware," in yesterday's Post. I hope you've had a chance to read General McChrystal's report on the war on Afghanistan. Dr. Wise is scheduled to lead the discussion of the report starting at 10:00 on Wednesday. We'll meet as usual at 8:30, and we'll lead off with the four internship reports (Amy, Sam, Josh, and Jessica).

We will be joined on Wednesday by Nila Whitfield, a retired OSU employee and friend of the Washington Academic Internship Program. I'm going to ask Nila to talk a little bit about her own career and her current activities. At 1:00 Nila's friend and former Glenn Fellow, Maribeth Linmore, will talk about her work at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

October 13 Addendum: Fareed Zakaria had an interesting piece on Afghanistan in yesterday's Post.

Free Walking Tour of Embassy Row

Sorry to say that the weather forecast for this weekend is not so good--highs in the 60s, clouds, and a chance of rain. So maybe this isn't the best possible moment for a walking tour, but the Weekend section of last week's Washington Post got my attention by highlighting an iPod-based tour of Embassy Row, arguably the most beautiful part of the city. Read all about it here. And here's a link to the Audio Tour Podcast, narrated by Cokie Roberts.

That handsome building in the above photo? That's the Embassy of Ukraine at 3350 M Street, N.W. It's also the house in which William Marbury was living when he sought a writ of mandamus requiring the Secretary of State, James Madison, to deliver a commission appointing Marbury, a loyal Federalist, a justice of the peace in D.C. The apparently insignificant lawsuit culminated in Chief Justice John Marshall's assertion, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), of the Supreme Court's power to declare Acts of Congress unconstitutional, and therefore null.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The autumn 2009 class of Glenn Fellows spent the morning of Wednesday, October 7, at the National Archives and Records Administration, where Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the United States Constitution are all proudly (if not altogether effectively) displayed. I don't know about you, but I always feel a surge of patriotic pride whenever I witness Americans exercising their First Amendment freedoms--even when it is on behalf of causes that seem highly dubious to me. A case in point might be the "truth truck" that is cruising around Capitol Hill these days (double-click on photo to enlarge, if you dare).

Solar Decathlon, October 5 Post and Updates

The solar houses are going up on the National Mall. Here is a link to the Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon website, where you can find an eight-minute video about OSU's entry in the competition. The last of the four photos above (yes, that's one of the towers of the Smithsonian castle in the background) was taken on Monday, October 5. The OSU solar house is directly adjacent to the Smithsonian Metro stop. For live coverage of the OSU solar house, click here.

October 13 update: From top to bottom, the photos show Rep. Charlie Wilson and Rep. Zach Space arriving at the solar house for the Tea with President Gee on Tuesday, October 13 (Glenn Fellow Josh Kramer at far right); Rep. Patrick Tiberi posing with Gregory Washington, Dean of the College of Engineering, and members of the OSU solar decathlon team at the October 8 open house; Rep. Tiberi touring the solar house; team member Rob Hedge standing in front of the OSU solar house on October 8; and the October 5 photo accompanying the original post.

October 13 update: The Leader Board now shows OSU at #9 in the Solar Decathlon competition. Go Bucks!

October 16 update: It looks as if we've finished 10th. Can we demand a recount?

Too Old for Foreign Service Work?

Tomorrow evening the Glenn Fellows will be meeting with three OSU alumni who have a great deal of wisdom to share about job-hunting strategies and the D.C. job market. Julie Saad works for the Office of Personnel Management, which is in effect the federal government's human resources office; Angela Mikolajewski is a staffer in the Office of Senator George Voinovich; and David Warner is an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. Each has a unique perspective based on an old adage that Washingtonians call "Miles's Law": "Where you stand depends upon where you sit."

Coincidentally, Steve Vogel of the Post had a column in the "Federal Diary" last Friday that illustrates just how perverse the rules governing the federal service can be. It also demonstrates the unique status of Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) within the U.S. Department of State. Click here for a link to Vogel's piece, which is about the Federal Service Act of 1980, which mandates that FSOs retire at age 65. As Vogel explains, this policy is supposed to reflect "the rigors of overseas service," but "it does not apply to political appointees--among them, high-profile diplomatic envoys such as Richard C. Holbrooke, 68, or George Mitchell, 76, or, for that matter, [Hillary Rodham] Clinton, who will be 65 in October 2012."

When he is remembered at all, James A. Garfield is usually thought of as one of the more or less anonymous bearded Republicans who served during the long period of presidential mediocracy that separated Lincoln from Teddy Roosevelt. People who know a little bit more might recall that his assassination denied Garfield the opportunity of making a significant mark on the republic. Northeast Ohioans, however, remember that their native son was an exemplary public servant--a teacher, a college president, a Civil War hero, an effective member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the subject of a Horatio Alger biography--and that Garfield, almost uniquely, transcended the culture of corruption that was endemic to the Gilded Age. In so far as his assassination was regarded as a national tragedy, he was the John F. Kennedy of his day. Pictured in the U.S. Capitol, left to right, are Sam Rose, Amy Ovecka, Jessica Meeker, Liz Hagan, JAG, Josh Kramer, Terry Traster, Chelsea Rider, and David Young.

Rationality and Public Policy Making

It's week 2, which means it must be time to take another close look at Eugene Bardach's A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis, a book that has always struck me as a kind of Rorschach test. While Bardach recognizes that policy analysis is "more art than science," he is, ultimately, an optimist. He thinks that public policy is improved when it is informed by rigorous empirical research. As a dyed-in-the-wool futilitarian, the Washington Buckeye is less sanguine about the prospects of rationality in the policy-making process.

The October 8 issue of the New York Review of Books has a remarkable article that bears on the issue: "The Anarchy of Success," by William Easterly, an economics professor at NYU. The article is a review of two new books, Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, and Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. Unfortunately, the NYROB won't let me attach a link to Easterly's article because it is premium content.

So here's the nub of the argument. Easterly says that the phenomenal rates of economic growth enjoyed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore (see skyline photo above), and Taiwan in the period between 1960 and 2007 inspired a tsunami of research by economists eager "to find in the empirical data which factors reliably lead to growth. Yet hundreds of research articles later, we wound up at a surprising end point: we don't know."

Think of it. After the investment of billions and billions of dollars and Euros in the righteous cause of economic development, we actually don't know the causes of growth. According to Easterly, summarizing Mlodinow, economists have identified 145 factors associated with growth, but "most of the patterns were spurious, because they failed to hold up when other researchers tried to replicate them." As for Bad Samaritans, Easterly says that Chang criticizes "those who have made overly strong claims for free trade and orthodox capitalism, but then he turns around and makes equally strong claims for protectionism and what he calls 'heterodox' capitalism, which includes such features as government promotion of favored industries, state-owned enterprises, and heavy regulation of foreign direct investment."

Could it be that "the science of muddling through" is the best we can do?

Life Imitates Art--Yet Again

It never ceases to amaze me how often--and usually, how eloquently--the daily newspaper expresses ideas that have been explicated at a high level of abstraction by certified intellectuals. It happened again today.

Last week, students in the Washington Academic Internship Program read and discussed two classic works of political science. The first, James Madison's Tenth Federalist, argues that one of the chief virtues of our "pluralistic" political system inheres in the many points of access offered to interest groups bent on frustrating popular majorities ("the mischiefs of faction"). The second, Charles Lindblom's essay on "the science of muddling through," explains why it is simply impossible for policy makers to be strictly rational, and why they must therefore settle for a decision-making method involving "successive limited comparisons" that guarantees incrementalist results.

Today it was David Broder's turn to demonstrate the relationship between these two (that is, Madison's and Lindblom's) ideas and their pertinence to contemporary public affairs. Click here to read Broder's column in today's Post.

Scary Gargoyles at Library of Congress

From left to right: WAIP director Kenneth Kolson, Sam Rose, Terry Traster, Josh Kramer, David Young, Liz Hagan, Jessica Meeker, Chelsea Rider, LOC tourguide Michael Lopez. Photo by Laura Allen.

Autumn 2009 Glenn Fellows visit Pension Building

The autumn 2009 class of Glenn Fellows has arrived. With program coordinator Laura Allen (at far left in this photo), they are Liz Hagan, Chelsea Rider, Terry Traster, Jessica Meeker, Amy Ovecka, David Young, Sam Rose, and Josh Kramer. The picture was taken outside the Pension Building, which houses the National Building Museum.

Inside is a spectacular atrium, where we took another picture, and an exhibit on the history of Washington, D.C., more or less from L'Enfant to the present. Afterwards, we went to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for a panel discussion of "Universal Health Care: Are the People Ready for It?" A busy first day!

Paging Mr. Madison...

Roughly midway through the fall 2009 edition of the Washington Academic Internship Program, we'll be reading Mann and Ornstein's indictment of Congress, The Broken Branch, and we'll be listening to a presentation by Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg, who argues that the real problem with Congress is that it has been made subordinate by the growth of presidential power.

Meanwhile, readers of this blog might be interested in an article by Garry Wills in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, which makes something of the same case in the process of documenting the many ways in which the Obama administration has not departed from dubious precedents set by the previous administration. Read Wills's piece here.

Is This a Great Neighborhood or What?

The process of planning for the autumn 2009 edition of the Washington Academic Internship Program has made us more keenly aware than ever of how rich are the resources of this city and how wise was the decision taken a year ago to move the Glenn School’s Washington office from downtown to our present location two blocks east of Union Station. Capitol Hill is the most exciting spot in town.

Yesterday, for instance, my colleague, Laura Allen, and I spent the afternoon in the Dirksen Senate Office Building attending an event called “Fighting Insurgencies with Laptops,” which featured a briefing by Nicholas Negroponte, MIT professor and author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, about a project that involves the distribution of mini-laptop computers to children in under-developed countries throughout the world. In his keynote remarks, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) explained how a “soft war” based on advanced information technology could put the madrassas out of the business of nurturing Islamist extremism. The full implications of the One Laptop per Child project were then explored by a panel that included, among others, Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the United States; Husain Haggani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States; and Anne Gearan, Chief Pentagon Correspondent for the Associated Press.

It was the kind of event that occurs virtually every day while Congress is in session. It was stimulating, free, under-attended (there were about 30 people, most of them Congressional staffers, in the audience), and under-reported. Laura and I had been invited by OSU alumna Rachel Szala, who works for Rasky-Baerlein Strategic Communications, Inc. Rachel is the “O” on the left-hand side of the photo above. The “H” is Sarah Binstock, and the “O” on the right is Rachel Johnston. All three were part of the class of Spring 2009 Glenn Fellows.

Glenns Are Eye Daughters

I am still trying to master the peculiar lexicon of Ohio State football. Several weeks ago, for example, I was told on good authority that Senator and Mrs. Glenn would be invited to participate in a ceremony previously performed only by such luminaries as Bob Hope, Jack Nicklaus, and Woody Hayes. What I heard was that they would be serving as "eye daughters" at the OSU-Navy game. Thanks to the generosity of Glenn School benefactors, my wife and I were able to attend the game (on the 50 yard line) and take a picture (see above) of the Glenns infiltrating TBDBITL to do their thing. And another of life's little mysteries dissolves.

Ordinarily, the novels of Philip Roth are about as foreign to me as Big Ten football culture. Recently, however, I re-read Goodbye, Columbus, and I was gratified to find that Roth's protagonist, Neil Klugman, was as confused and tantalized by OSU traditions as am I:

For many this will be their last glimpse of the campus, of Columbus, for many many years. Life calls us, and anxiously if not nervously we walk out into the world and away from the pleasures of these ivied walls. But not from its memories. They will be the concomitant, if not the fundament, of our lives. We shall choose husbands and wives, we shall choose jobs and homes, we shall sire children and grandchildren, but we will not forget you, Ohio State. In the years ahead we will carry with us always memories of thee, Ohio State...

The John and Annie Glenn Historic Site and Time Machine

Though it was just last week, the docents, or “interpreters,” at the historic Glenn House insist that my wife and I visited the New Concord, Ohio, shrine on September 4, 1937. We were told that sixteen-year-old John Herschel Glenn, Jr., also known as “Bud,” was over at Annie Castor’s at the time, and so we were shown around the house by JHG, Sr. Johnny’s dad was a plumber, and he made a pretty convincing case that the family would have lost its home had it not been for the policies of the New Deal. The curious thing about the Glenn House is its unique cicadian rhythm (Down SpellChecker!). Every January 1 the clock is turned up or back a full seven years. So, if my wife and I were to return next Labor Day weekend, we would find ourselves in 1944, and we'd be told that Johnny was off fighting in the Pacific with the United States Marines. It seems as if this Johnny will never come marching home.

The Glenn House, which is full of period artifacts, is well worth a visit, though time travel can be a little disconcerting.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009)

Here in Washington, D.C., there is today—a month early, at least—a nip of fall in the air. Even more improbably, a wave of bipartisanship has swept over this city, one that is sure to last until next Tuesday morning, when partisan warfare will resume as usual on Capitol Hill.

This brief but intense era of good feelings was inspired by the death on August 25 of Senator Ted Kennedy, who has been eulogized both as “the liberal lion of the Senate” and as an exemplar of political generosity. Kennedy’s many Republican friends in Congress—Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative John Boehner, among them—have offered eloquent testimony to Kennedy’s caring and gracious nature, as evidenced by his willingness to collaborate with Republicans. A special issue of The Hill contains a number of such of tributes. In the Washington Post, even George Will found something nice to say about Senator Kennedy last week.

Let’s enjoy this while it lasts. But before the canonization juggernaut gets up a full head of steam, consider how differently things look from where I sit. I mean that literally. I happen to sit in the Capitol Hill office of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, which is located at 239 Massachusetts Avenue N.E., a few blocks away of the United States Capitol. The Glenn School moved into this old rowhouse a little over one year ago. Before that, the building accommodated a French restaurant called La Brasserie, which Senator Kennedy helped to make notorious.

La Brasserie was one of the local watering holes where Senators went to misbehave, and by that I am not referring to steak tartare. The definitive treatment of Senator Kennedy’s romps at La Brasserie was undertaken by Michael Kelly and published in 1990 by GQ.

As Kathleen Parker wrote in the Post last week, “Kennedy's life was indeed a mixed sack of good works and sometimes-deplorable behavior. A charitable person would hope that he found peace at the end of his life. An observant person might note, without pleasure, that even in death, it’s all politics.”

I see no reason why we can’t be both charitable and observant.

A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come

I stole that title from Aaron Wildavsky, who was referring to a proposal to abolish the electoral college. But my subject is fast trains, specifically the proposal to build a high-speed railway linking Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Think it's a good idea? Well, you might want to look at today's Washington Post, which has a lucid discussion of the romance of the rails, called "A Rail Boondoggle, Moving at High Speed," by Robert J. Samuelson.

Samuelson's essay made me think of a policy paper published a few years ago by the Cato Institute, which had perhaps the greatest title of all time: "A Desire Named Streetcar," by Randal O'Toole.

I love trains, especially European trains. The one pictured above, called the Pendolino, is Finland's version of high-speed rail. It's a luxury that Ohio can ill afford.

Good Advice for Washington Interns

Summer is winding down, so today's Washington Post has a piece on how summer interns should be finishing up their work assignments. Taking advantage of opportunities to follow up with former colleagues during the subsequent school year is good advice for interns looking for permanent jobs.

Mr. Justice Scalia and the Moritz School of Law

I argued in an earlier post, “’Out Here’ in D.C.,” that easterners are inclined to dismiss Midwesterners as provincials and that Glenn Fellows, who have every reason to be professionally ambitious, forget or ignore this at their peril.

There could be no more dramatic example than that provided last spring by Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. As Adam Liptak reported last May in the The New York Times, Justice Scalia, speaking at American University in Washington, D.C., explained to an audience of law students that their odds of landing a clerkship with a Supreme Court justice were slim or none because they are reserved for students from America’s most prestigious law schools. According to Liptak, the “hard truth” is that “Over the last six years, the justices have hired about 220 law clerks. Almost half went to Harvard or Yale. Chicago, Stanford, Virginia and Columbia collectively accounted for 50 others." Liptak reports that “Justice Scalia said he could think of one sort-of exception to his rule favoring the elite schools.” To wit:

“One of my former clerks whom I am the most proud of now sits on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals" in Cincinnati, the justice said, referring to Jeffrey S. Sutton. But Justice Scalia explained that Mr. Sutton had been hired by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. after his retirement and then helped out in Justice Scalia's chambers. "I wouldn't have hired Jeff Sutton," Justice Scalia said. "For God's sake, he went to Ohio State! And he's one of the very best clerks I ever had."

As one can readily imagine, Justice Scalia’s remarks inspired a kerfuffle in Buckeyeland. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Scalia was “not a big fan of OSU law graduates,” and the Ohio State Bar Association objected to the “insult” and issued a sharp rejoinder, arguing that “Intellect, skill and fundamental integrity are not measured by the school someone attends. Birthright, money, LSAT scores and magazine rankings of law schools are not the standards by which this profession judges itself.”

My reading of this story is that Justice Scalia was conveying brute facts, which are not in dispute, and that his endorsement of Judge Sutton indicates that he understands that the prejudice in favor of elite law schools is ultimately not rational. True, he seems disinclined to buck the system, but I think it’s pretty clear that his “For God’s sake” remark was intended as irony. They learn that sort of thing at the elite schools, such as Harvard, where Scalia earned his law degree. They also learn not to harbor too many illusions about the quality of instruction.

September 14, 2009, update. Further evidence that Harvard law graduates tend to be lovers of irony comes from an AP story that Lawrence Hurley cites in his Supreme Court blog, Washington Briefs. Elitist joke alert: Asked if too many of the justices came from elite law schools, CJ Roberts says no -- some went to Yale (AP).

"Out Here" in D.C.

I have always thought that my credentials as an Ohioan were reasonably good. I taught for fifteen years at a small college in the northeastern part of the state. My wife and I started our family and made our first mortgage payment in Ohio. We learned to appreciate the Western Reserve’s rich inheritance in Greek Revival architecture and the simple pleasures of the Geauga County Fair. Thanks to WCLV and the Cleveland Orchestra, we developed a taste for classical music.

We moved to D.C.—actually, to Alexandria, Virginia—in 1985. Gradually, we put down roots, though we never stopped feeling like transplanted Ohioans, and we never gave up the perverse pleasure of rooting for the Cleveland Indians. And so, when, in the fall of 2008, I opened a Capitol Hill office for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, it was with the conviction that one can, Thomas Wolfe’s strenuous assertion to the contrary notwithstanding, “go home again.”

We were mistaken. I have learned that from Page Hall one views the world through a distinctive Scarlet and Gray prism in which the various accoutrements of NCAA football—e.g., Brutus Buckeye, Block O, TBDBITL, Coach Hays—loom extra-large. On my occasional visits to campus, someone inevitably will ask, “So how are things going out there?” It seems to me that the expression captures the essence of Columbocentrism. It amazes me that Buckeyes living in the Washington metropolitan area willingly concede the point. “How long have you been out here?” I was recently asked by a Glenn School alumnus who lives in suburban Maryland.

I simply cannot get used to the idea that our Capitol Hill office is “out” anywhere. In colonial and early republican America, everyone understood that it was the “Ohio country” that was “out there” in the transmontane west. And from their perspective, early settlers in the west surely regarded the Atlantic seaboard not as “out there,” but as “back east”—back in terms of both time and space. Californians do the same thing today.

I could understand it if people on the mother ship thought of their satellite as “down there” in the nation’s capital, since Washington lies south of Columbus, both geographically and culturally. I could get used to thinking that we are “down here” in D.C. But “out here,” no.

The reader might ask, “Why does any of this matter?” I would submit that it matters because easterners--never mind their own distorted view of the world, famously captured by the cartoonist Saul Steinberg in his New Yorker cover showing the buildings of 9th Avenue casting their shadows over the Great Plains--are inclined to dismiss midwesterners as provincials. This is one of those brute facts of life that ambitious Glenn Fellows should bear in mind. And that brings us to Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Stay tuned.

Security and Rationality

In yesterday’s Washington Post, David Ignatius (“No Unguarded Moment”) argued that “it’s time to scale back the security mania.” I was struck by the following passage:

These days, you can't get into any self-respecting building in Washington, public or private, without showing identification and signing a visitors' log. When I went to give a talk at the National Defense University last week, it was like entering the Green Zone in Baghdad. They made me open the trunk the hood and all four doors of my car--and that was after my license plate number had been cleared in advance.

On the one hand, Mr. Ignatius’s account of his experience at National Defense University has the ring of truth. A decade ago, my family joined the swim club at Fort Meyer in Arlington. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the newly beefed-up security procedures at Fort Meyer made going to the pool more trouble than it was worth. In addition to opening the trunk, the hood, and all four doors, we had to get out while security guards used long-handled mirrors to inspect the undercarriage of our vehicle. Before long, we found ourselves a new swim club. So, yeah, I could relate to Mr. Ignatius’s lament.

On the other hand, I visit a lot of offices in this city—executive agencies, NGOs, think tanks, government relations firms, Congressional offices—and I am struck not so much by the strictness of the security as by its unevenness.

As it happens, my colleague, Laura Allen, and I visited NDU the same week as Mr. Ignatius. We didn’t drive; we walked to Fort McNair from the Waterfront Metro stop. Laura was carrying an oversized handbag. I had a backpack with enough room for a dozen hand grenades or more. At the gate, no one looked in our bags. We were not asked to empty our pockets or to pass through whole-body x-ray machines. The guard simply took down some information from our drivers licenses, returned them to us, and waved us through.

When we go out to visit Glenn Fellows at their internship sites, Laura and I find that it is simply impossible to predict the level of security to which we will be subjected. Several weeks ago, we encountered Green Zone-level fastidiousness at the National Park Service, and we were wanded twice at the Department of Agriculture. Does anyone really think that the NPS and USDA are more likely targets of terrorism than Fort McNair?

I am reminded of my daily commute on the Washington Metro. I know that on any given day at least one of the four escalators I need to use will be out of service. And yet, I never know which one, as today’s out-of-service escalator pattern never seems to bear any relation to yesterday’s.

What makes all this unnerving is that one can’t help but consider the possibility that Metro’s incompetent escalator maintenance—which I have been furiously, albeit silently, documenting for the past twenty years—is an indicator of its inability to do other, even more important, things, such as maintaining the electronic circuitry on which the prevention of deadly train wrecks depends. I suspect I am not the only Red Line rider—excuse me, “customer”—who has reflected on that since the unfortunate June 22 “incident” at Fort Totten.

Before we scale back our security system, let’s try to address the element of caprice inhering in it.