Chicago

Bashing government has joined baseball as the country's national pastime. Every remaining presidential candidate, including the incumbent, is running as a political outsider. Their campaign speeches revile the very system they want to lead. They belittle both governmental output and employees' performance. And they are not alone.

At the state and local levels the candidates, the media and antigovemment citizens' groups have also made the "bureaucrat" public enemy No. 1. To them our government at all levels is filled with incompetent hacks and lethargic paper pushers. Moreover, in their view these public employees produce little but fraud, waste and mismanagement.

And how do these maligned public servants fight back? Most appointed employees cower behind the protection of both the civil service system or their employee unions or both. Some defense. In a little over 100 years after the hiring abuses of patronage were first attacked and the notion of merit selection of civil servants was pushed as the remedy, the cure has become almost as bad as the original disease. To fire, or even discipline any public employee usually takes more time and money than management is willing to spend. In good times top administrators would find it cheaper simply to hire someone new to do the job and then hide the incompetent employee elsewhere in the system. Today, in bad economic times, that maneuver is no longer as easily accomplished, and big and small governmental agencies are dotted with people unable or unwilling to do their jobs.

What is sad is that the hardworking employees get smeared with the same brush. Public managers, hardly known as a courageous bunch, are frightened to make tough or controversial decisions for fear of alienating their equally trembling superiors. There simply is little reward for hardnosed management.

Well, without sounding like some "goo goo" idealist or using words like "regime," "ethics" or "excellence," I want to defend the public employee. Most work darn hard, for not much money, and receive very little recognition. Now, before reacting to pillory my defense with congressional scandals, perk politics and payroll padding, think about the people who are not the topics of talk shows, headlines and grand jury indictments:

• The rural township road commissioners who single-handedly keep miles of road cleaned and cleared.

• County clerk employees across the state who worked feverishly this spring matching newly drawn districts with old precinct lines so Illinoisians could have primary elections.

• The state workers who deliver vital services despite diminished budgets, no salary increases and greater workloads.

• Big and small city police officers and firefighters who put their lives on the line for their communities.

Also consider these three points:

1. Yes, there are plenty of ills in the public sector and mistakes have been made, but demeaning the system will not foster the

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recruitment and promotion of bright young people to replace the incompetents.

2. Government cannot be run like a business. Name one business where the employer is the customer. That is government. Taxpayers pay the bills and receive the services.

3. People simply expect too much from government. Because of the leverage of the vote, elected public officials are unable to tell the truth to the average citizen. Why? Citizens would not like what they heard, namely that there is no Santa Claus, Harry Houdini is dead, and gain without pain is only found in fairy tales.

Given the above, it is clear why two presidential candidates. Republican George Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, speak only in generalities, and the independent, H. Ross Perot, does not speak at all — and Perot is gaining.

Government cannot be run like a business. Name one business where the employer is the customer

Why? Specifics require making hard choices. Policy decisions require win-and-lose compromises among competing interests. Since no candidate wants to offend, campaign speeches are repeated over and over again filled with adjectives and adverbs. When vague campaign promises are not kept, public employees feel the political pressure. Public employees don't change laws; they must do their jobs according to the laws and regulations decided by elected officials.

Political scientist James Q. Wilson sums up the entire argument concerning what we should expect from the public sector in his new book, Bureaucracy. According to Wilson, "The governments of the United States were not designed to be efficient or powerful but to be tolerable and malleable." Citizens facing hard times should not make public employees the scapegoat for societal ills.

Paul M. Green is director of the Institute for Public Policy and Administration, Governor's State University.

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