We are tempted to say that some of our best friends are government bureaucrats, but that is not precisely true. It would be closer to the mark to say that nearly all of our friends are government bureaucrats. Living in the greater Washington area as we do, we are surrounded on all sides by eager, bright, redundantly credentialed people who work for, with, and (on the alternate political cycles) against the Federal Government. They are good friends, good neighbors, good citizens.
They are also, as a class, one of the most deeply rooted and pervasively influential special interests in town. For a generation and more their claims to public privilege have been virtually unchallenged, their special status in our national life tacitly affirmed. It is only with the onset of recession and the general economic alarum that the basic questions begin to form. Such questions as: By what right are federal employees exempted from obligations that fall upon the rest of us? Under what dispensation are public servants entitled to economic benefits that are denied to the general citizenry?
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