With . Prof. Ginsberg absolutely. This is a true story and those who live in washington have probably heard versions of the story. I was at a dinner party and sitting next to me was a pretty senior hhs executive, someone whom i have known for a long time, very nice person. And she said to me, well, what are you writing these days . So i said, a colleague and i conducted a survey of washington officials. Because everyone is always surveying americans to see what they think of washington, we said, lets survey washington to see what it thinks of america. So we surveyed officials and what i will call members of the policy community, that is the contractors, who often are interchangeable with officials, people who work in think tanks, everyone involved in developing rules and regulations. So i said, we want to see what they thought of americans. In fact, my original title for this book was what the government thinks of the people. But publishers never like my titles, they always say my titles are no good. All right. They are not exactly like us. They are wealthier, they are whiter, they are better educated, they have different views on matters, and they think ordinary americans dont really know very much and that really the government should move according to its own ideas, not pay too much attention to what ordinary folks think. They felt the same way about congress, by the way. They dont have that much good to say about the president either. They thought that the only people who knew anything were other Public Officials. Thats who they talk to. Brian you say in your book that some 14 million americans are associated with the government in some way . Prof. Ginsberg some way, yes. Brian can you break it down . Prof. Ginsberg well, about between 2. 5 million and 3 million are actual federal Civil Servants, and then the rest consist of contractors. And, as you know, in many agencies, the contractors outnumber the actual Civil Servants. Department of education, department of energy. If you walk into an office, you dont know who is who. They call it a blended workforce. So there are the contractors, then in addition, we have all of the supporting groups. People who work in think tanks, in research foundations, and even people who work in lobby groups that are connected to particular government agencies. Environmentalists who are closely connected with the epa, the Environmental Protection agency, for example. So all in all, some 12 million to 14 million people, and these are the people who actually govern this country. Everything that we learn in high school and college, maybe even including in my own text book i am not sure, i will have to look and see everything that we learn is not exactly right, because what do we learn . We learn we elect a congress, it makes the law, the president executes the law, the courts review the laws, but that aint exactly how the system works. Much of what we think of as the law consists of rules and regulations written by bureaucratic agencies, by bureaucrats who are not elected by anyone and who often serve for decades. A lot of people like to talk about term limits for members of congress, which i think is a terrible idea, by the way, but the average length of service of a member of congress is eight years. Eight years. Whereas the average length of service for a senior nonelected official in our country is 26 years. So if those who think that term limits are important, they are looking in the wrong place. Brian as you know, there are very few factories of any kind around the washington, d. C. Area, but seven of the richest counties in the United States are all around washington, making on an average more than most places in the United States. Why is that so . Prof. Ginsberg well, first of all, federal Civil Servants are themselves well paid. And they say they are not. The general line is that they are not as well paid as people in comparable positions in the private sector. Well, there arent exactly comparable positions in the private sector. When you look at the total package of pay, Retirement Benefits plus the job security, which cant be beat except by tenured professors this is a package of remuneration that is excellent, and in many families, you have two Civil Servants, and sometimes you have someone who is drawing military retirement and working as a Civil Servant. So thats a starting point. The average salary the average remuneration, according to the office of Personnel Management data, is considerably higher than average americans. Second, surrounding this group, we have lobbyists, lawyers, all the folks who work to try to get the first group to do what they want. This is a city where we have k street. We have several hundred thousand people who work in the legal lobbying industry, have government contractors. So surrounding the capital are industries that dont produce smoke they do produce a lot of hot air, but no smoke or pollution, and this makes washington and its surrounding counties a very, very wealthy area and it affects the way that people here look at things. I mean, they may read a series in the Washington Post about rural poverty, but they are not familiar with it. They talk to other people in what we call the social safe way, where everybody goes. They live in a bubble. They talk to one another. Everyone they know is pretty welloff. The schools are very good. But they are not familiar with america. One thing that we did in our survey was to ask them basic questions about america. I got tired of all of these studies trying to show that americans dont know anything. My favorite you remember jay leno used to do his jaywalking routine . And i remember one time, they were out there asking people to name members of the Supreme Court. A lot of people named judge judy. This got a big yuck. But judge judy and Justice Ginsburg could be confused. They kind of look alike, they went to the same high school. Did you know that . James Madison High School in brooklyn, along with chuck schumer, and a lot of people went there. So at any rate, when we asked federal Civil Servants to tell us about america, they didnt know that much. They didnt really have a good idea of what americans incomes were. They didnt have a good idea of what their level of education might be. They didnt have a good idea of the sort of racial and ethnic composition of america. Interestingly, too, they didnt have a good idea of what ordinary americans thought. Now, if you look at the views of ordinary americans, compare them to the views of Civil Servants, they are different. But they are less different than Civil Servants think. Civil servants think that ordinary americans have views that are very, very different from theirs. Why . Well, psychologists have a concept they call false uniqueness. If you think someone is really dumb, you cant possibly think that they think the important thoughts that you think. You think they must think other things, and thats what our Civil Servants believe. Ordinary americans cant possibly have the same exalted thoughts that we do. So the survey was very revealing, beginning with differences in income and going on to the fact that federal Civil Servants dont really know much about america. In fact, one of the suggestions we make, and i will get a little bit ahead of the game, is that we send more Civil Servants out to learn about america, that we rusticate them. Now, in many agencies, plenty of people work in regional and local offices, but at the policy level, hardly anyone steps outside washington except to go on vacation. There is no reason why the top officials of the department of energy or the department of commerce need to be in washington. Some people say they dont do much anyway. So let them spend time in the regional offices where they get to rub shoulders with ordinary folks because lots of studies show that bureaucrats who live among ordinary people develop more sympathy for them. Brian where would we find you on a normal day . Prof. Ginsberg where would you find me . Well, lets see. You might find me taking dance lessons, which i enjoy. You might find me walking my dogs and going to dog training, but youd probably find me in the university. Brian what university . Prof. Ginsberg Johns Hopkins. Brian and what do you teach . Prof. Ginsberg i teach political science. Brian you talked about this word in the book. If somebody listens to your last couple of minutes, they might say, wow, that guy is cynical. Prof. Ginsberg well, i hope so. Cynicism is very important. I tell students that cynicism is the beginning of wisdom, because you have to look realistically at the world of politics. The germans have a term, realpolitik see i have got my r rolling realpolitik, which means realism. We cynics try to be realistic. We dont take what politicians say at face value. You know what, we found that they break their promises lots of times, they make up things. For them, words are weapons designed to garner our support. So we need to be able to understand whats really going on in politics. Politics is usually about power, money, status. It is not about truth, justice, and the american way. Brian well, let me show prof. Ginsberg i wish it was. Brian let me show some video right now to go along with what you just said. Prof. Ginsberg ok. Brian and we will come back and get your view of this. [video clip] pres. Kennedy there will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in cuba by the United States armed forces. Pres. Johnson it is my duty to the American People to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas and the gulf of tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action and reply. Pres. Reagan we did not repeat did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we. Vp cheney simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. Pres. Obama under the reform we seek, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your private Health Insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period. Brian its all really taken from your book. Prof. Ginsberg i recognize those scenes. I always thought Lyndon Johnsons nose was getting longer as he spoke, but perhaps thats just my imagination. Well, these are excellent reminders of something that is hard for us americans to remember, and that is that to politicians, words have a different purpose than they do to you and me. When we talk, we exchange information. We might exchange emotions. We see that as the ordinary use of language. To a politician, words are weapons. They are the weapons of political warfare, and politicians choose their words, their ideas, with a view toward capturing and exercising power. So words are often designed to persuade us of something that is in the politicians interest. Now, i would point viewers to the most recent president ial election, because i thought it was a remarkable exercise in realpolitik. Here we had politicians pretty nakedly pursuing power. Right . There was no pretense at this point. They would say or do whatever seemed useful to win power, and if that turned out not be useful, they would shift and Say Something else. So for example, secretary clinton famously castigated donald trump for asserting that he might not accept the results of the election. Well, that was when she thought she was going to win, and it was different when it looked like he was going to win. So i think this those who view this election objectively, rather than through their partisan lenses, saw politics for what it was. It is a struggle for power in which words are weapons, and these three videos that you showed us are videos of president s lying because it was convenient to do so. The weapons of mass destruction, nobody thought they were there. Nobody in the white house thought they were there, but it seemed like a good thing to say. The keep your doctor under the Affordable Care act, well, nobody in the white house thought that was true, but it seemed like a good thing to say. So, you know, we have all known people like that. People often at the heads of organizations are like that. They can change direction at the drop of a hat and show no embarrassment. So thats why im a cynic, and im a cynic because this is what i have observed, and i think if you are not a cynic, you are too easily taken in. I recommend to everyone, be more cynical. We always see in the press, oh, dont be too cynical. We cant be cynical. Who is more cynical than reporters . Right . So i think that in order to live in the political world, you have to understand what politicians are about. In ancient athens, they said that a citizen had to understand how to rule and be ruled. Both. Well, in our country, when we teach children about politics, we really only teach them how to be ruled. We tell them you should vote and do your jury duty and whatnot, but we dont tell them much about what rulers do. And the athenians felt that in order to be a good citizen, you had to actually understand the arts of politics, if only to protect yourself. So i think theres a lot of merit in their view. They werent cynics, i guess, but they were realistic. Brian you mentioned being a cynic, and a lot of definitions of you online is that you are also a libertarian. Prof. Ginsberg mmhmm. Brian is that true, and how often do you find libertarians in the academic world . Prof. Ginsberg well, thats a very interesting question. I am a libertarian on some issues. Ill tell you, the guy who writes the wikipedia article about me decided i was a libertarian, so there i am. I am a libertarian on many issues, but as to the because i feel that years ago, i took a class with milton freidman. And i thought, you know, theres something to what he says. That those folks who are spending other peoples money are very incautious with it, and the government is not always the best solution, sometimes its the problem. But as to how many libertarians there are in the university, well, i will leave that to your guess, but there arent hardly any. I mean, i think that most professors are liberal democrats. And when universities hire faculty, they hire people like themselves. There was an interesting book written last year in which to the two authors whose names i dont recall right now surveyed a conservative faculty. So they had trouble finding any. And they interviewed people, and they reported that one person they interviewed was so afraid of being found out by his colleagues that they had to conduct a clandestine interview in the arboretum where no one would see them. So there is a shortage. When universities talk about diversity, they quite rightly are interested in issues of race and ethnicity and gender, but intellectual diversity is not something that institutions of Higher Learning care much about, im sorry to say. Brian how did you do this survey . Prof. Ginsberg we sent out we obtained mailing lists and telephone directories from various civilian agencies and other organizations, and we sent out online about 2,500 questionnaires, and we got a pretty good response rate. We had about 850 respondents, and it was a long questionnaire. Brian how long . Prof. Ginsberg it was it took about 45 minutes to complete. Brian its in the book, though, isnt it . Prof. Ginsberg yes, its all in the book. The questionnaire is in the book. Brian 80some questions, i believe. Prof. Ginsberg yes, its a very long questionnaire, but this is a group that enjoys filling out forms, so they sat and filled them out. Now, if viewers think 850 is in is not very many a national , sample is usually about 1100 people, and those 1100 represent 300 million. So our sample was quite large, and moreover, we checked it against the Demographic Data provided by the office of Personnel Management, and our sample was spot on. It was a very socially, at least, a very good sample of the group we wanted to study. In national surveys, viewers may recall from the 2016 election, sometimes the samples, when they weight them to account for different groups in the electorate, they throw them off because the current electorate may not be exactly the same as the previous electorate. In our case, thats not a problem. Brian but you know, when you are talking about the Civil Servant and thats the bureaucrat and i assume thats what you mean they all come from somewhere else other than washington. Prof. Ginsberg they do. They do indeed. Brian so they have lived out there. Prof. Ginsberg they have. They have lived out there, but its been a while. 26 years on average for many of them at the upper levels. Thats a long time. So maybe they were from boise, idaho to begin with, but its been a long time since they were back there. And they lose their perspective. They tend to think like, dress like everybody else in washington. You are probably familiar with the idea of bureaucratic culture. Every Bureaucratic Agency has a culture. In the uniformed services, theres the right way, the wrong way, and the navy way. And in the navy, you do it the navy way or you are out. The same is true of every agency. If you dont learn to share that agencys perspective, you are an outsider. You cant succeed. So generally, over a few years, careerists developed the perspective of their agency. Its almost inevitable. Brian how does the government do when it comes to diversity compared to the rest of the United States . Prof. Ginsberg oh, very poorly. The Civil Service of the united the upper levels of the Civil Service are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. The rest of america is changing, but not our government. Brian why not . Prof. Ginsberg good question. Fir