Honor public service
Letter to the Editor
Nov. 5 is just a few weeks away and before the present administration leaves office commendations ought be made for a fantastic, almost surreal, dedication public service departmental employees - guided by gubernatorial appointees, the lieutenant governor and the governor himself - have made over the last eight years. To the OMB director and administrator who may have needed to use some reserves but avoided depleting PFD earnings or principle producing a finished product on time, to his director of Elections and its administrator wherein physically disparate and expansive regions were so well attended a "Florida fiasco" did not ensue. For these successes and many others, I am grateful to them and to their staffs for their humble service on our behalf!
Sometimes we forget the exceptional commitment to public welfare that must motivate nearly all those appointed (many of whom seek not the honor)! As department heads and supervisors, if they wish to achieve personal and public satisfaction they are often required to forsake private values. One woman, high-level in the Department of Elections, was so missed by her family their desire to be near Mom had them watching prime-time television in another office a few doors down from hers.
After an unwitting forfeiture of the personal cognitive agility necessary to function in this high-stressed reality - the likes of which are depicted by that drama "The West Wing" - I can only vouch as a custodian who has witnessed the long days and long weeks this kind of high-intensity authority must and does demand.
Living with the feeling someone or something could "yank the cornerstone before structural completion" seems to define the intensity, immediacy and thoroughness of past-President Clinton's White House. The tendency to eschew assuming anything about other individuals with a "free will" sums-up the kind of public service that distinguishes right or left philosophy. It seems current leadership on the right first serves self and ego so must assume to know another's ultimate intent, while current leadership on the left first serves society and others.
Do we want to elect as our leader someone whose first and foremost thought is, "How will this solution provide gains for me or for my ego?" The current condition of the U.S. in education, socio-economics, the stock market and politics has provided sufficient testimony to the fact America is being suffocated under the blindfold of short-term gains.
This Nov. 5 get out to vote, and when you do, vote Democratic!
John S. Sonin
Juneau