FOREWORD
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As I pen these words, we are living through a time in our nation’s history when powerful forces are seeking to divide us, one from another; when the legitimacy of our constitutional institutions is under attack; and when factually supported truth itself has come under relentless challenge.
I am among those who have not lost confidence in our ability to right the ship of American democratic life, but I also realize that we are in a fight—a fight for the soul of our democracy.
It is from this perspective that I can highly recommend Cedric Alexander’s cogent analysis in this very readable book.
Dr. Alexander was trained as a clinical psychologist, with a lifetime of experience in law enforcement at all levels. He brings to this book an acute understanding of both why our cherished form of government—and those who serve us in the civil service—appear to be under such unrelenting attack and how we, as citizens, should and must respond.
Dr. Alexander’s book may especially resonate with me because, as an American of color, I have been able to receive an excellent public education, become an attorney, and serve my community and country in both the Maryland General Assembly and the Congress because of one very important fact: Americans of conscience from every political vantage point took our Constitution seriously and fought for my right to be all that I could become.
This is the personal debt that I and so many others with my heritage owe to our democratic republic—to the twenty-million-plus Americans who serve our republic and its values in our nation’s civil service.
And this is also why I, personally, will remain in the fight to preserve our republic and the humane and equitable values at its foundation for as long as I can draw breath.
It is for these reasons that I have contributed this brief foreword as a way of speaking to all patriotic Americans, whatever their philosophies may be, who are at heart “constitutionalists.”
It was to our Constitution—and not to any political perspective or party—that I gave my oath when I became an officer of the court, when I joined the Maryland state legislature, and when I was elected to serve in the Congress of the United States.
It is this commitment that I bring to my work as chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the committee that has direct oversight over our federal civil service. From my more than two decades of experience performing this oversight, I can confirm that our nation’s federal employees deserve our respect, gratitude, and support.
In Defense of Public Service advances this perspective toward our civil service—federal, state, and local—in clear and compelling terms. Equally important, if not more so, Dr. Alexander’s work explains why these millions of American civil servants are so important to all of us and to the preservation of our system of government.
This is a time when we, as Americans, need his perspective.
When people in the leadership of the nation attack our courts, the members of our Congress, our civil servants, and our press, they are attacking the glue that holds our diverse nation together as the United States of America.
And when these attackers do so on the basis of factually unfounded opinion, rather than verifiable evidence, they are engaged in demagoguery of the most dangerous sort.
This is why our civil service, committed to maintaining the rule of law and decision-making based on verifiable facts, is so important to maintaining the legitimacy of our government, both elected and appointed.
Dr. Alexander is right to point out that, under our democratic republic, elected leaders make policy but must rely on civil servants, appointed on the basis of merit, to implement those public policies. We must rely on the expertise of our merit-based civil service if we wish to have a government that addresses the factual realities of our lives (to the extent that human beings can ever achieve that goal).
This duty to find and implement the truth, as I have mentioned, is the province of our civil servants, whether they serve in Washington, DC; our states; or in the law enforcement agencies of our country. This is not to say, and Dr. Alexander does not contend, that our government agencies always get it right or that they never overreach. Human beings, however talented and well-meaning, make mistakes.
That is why our Constitution gives our elected representatives and our courts the power of oversight. What it does mean, however, is that decision-making by government must be based on factually verifiable reality and not solely on the opinions of any partisan group.
In Defense of Public Service admirably makes this case, outlining how our civil service came to be created and improved and arguing persuasively why our civil servants deserve our respect and support. The book appears at a critical, even dangerous, moment for our nation and our democracy, and, for this reason, I will close with these parting thoughts.
As citizens of the greatest democratic republic in the world, we have the privilege and duty to recall our nation’s founding and to engage our nation on the basis of those fundamental principles.
We should never forget that, at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether the framers had proposed a republic or a monarchy. And Mr. Franklin is said to have replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Today, in 2019, I still believe that we have a republic—but only if we can keep it.
I hold fast to this conviction because the functioning—indeed, the very legitimacy—of our democratic system has been under attack for some time. I am speaking, of course, of the continuing attacks on our elections—from sources both foreign and domestic—and of the failure of too many of my colleagues in Congress and the White House to adequately defend us against those attacks.
For the unity and future of our republic, our Congress must reassert its constitutional obligation of oversight, seeking and obtaining the answers to serious questions of governance that, until now, have gone unanswered. We must perform this constitutional duty so effectively and convincingly that those Americans who support this president and his administration and those who disagree will reach a shared and united answer as to how our nation must proceed.
I remain confident that we can fulfill this historic duty. To succeed, however, we will need our federal civil service and the Americans who serve us there to give us their complete and unbiased cooperation. To the extent that we are required to do so, we will enforce that cooperation through action in our courts, but I sincerely hope that this route will seldom be necessary. Toward this end, I will close with this pledge. In the words of my heroine, former congresswoman Barbara Jordan, from 1974:
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, [or] the destruction of the Constitution.
I hope and trust that all Americans feel—and will do—the same.
Sincerely,
Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland