Arne Duncan is hitting all the right notes, at least when it comes to building a strong working relationship with the Department of Education's career civil servants. That's the word from inside 400 Maryland Avenue, according to this account posted on Talking Points Memo. In his first days on the job, Secretary Duncan enjoyed lunch in the Department's cafeteria, visited every office in the agency, and told an all-staff gathering that everyone should call him "Arne." According to the anonymous Department of Education employee quoted by TPM:
I know this isn't anything earthshattering, but the change in the atmosphere at the Department over the last week has been really astounding. In the past, we all knew that the Secretary had an agenda that she was going to follow, and that we were only there to affirm that her way was best. We really feel that Arne wants to know the truth, whether it fits with his agenda or not.
To which I say: Amen. I'm ashamed of how we Bushies treated career staff, by and large, shutting them out of key meetings, treating them as if they were the enemy, assuming that they would oppose our policies or were incompetent. I feel lucky to have figured out, early on, how bogus all of those attitudes were (thanks largely to the example set by my first boss at the Department, Deputy Secretary Bill Hansen, who started working at the Department of Education as a 20-year-old Reagan appointee and seemed to know more than half of the 5,000 employees by name). There's no doubt in my mind that the implementation of No Child Left Behind could have been much more successful had we engaged the Department's career staff earlier and in a more meaningful way.
That's not to say that the Education Department is full of nothing but A-plus staff. Thanks to civil service rules (which basically grant lifetime tenure on Day One), there are plenty of people who spend their days doing very little work and adding very little value to the taxpayer. But for a place that doesn't treat its employees terribly well, the Department is blessed with more excellent staff than it deserves, particularly at the most senior levels. It's to Arne's credit (he said we could call him that!) that he's already figured out just how valuable they can be.
