John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
When I first became a civil servant, I had to fill out a form. The form did not ask whether or not I was a citizen of America but I had to certify that I was a Democrat.
He was describing his first government experience as a a civil servant of the Department of Agriculture in the New Deal. The political party affiliation is not so critical today for most civil service posts but there are about 10,000 positions where party affiliation is very critical.
John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908–2006, Economist, U. S. Ambassador to India (Democrat), C-SPAN Interview with Brian Lamb, September 23, 1994
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The Vice President had quoted Ronald Reagan’s famous inaugural address statement {630713}. Once Quayle became the number two man in the government, he was asked if he were part of the problem which elicited this famous response.
Whitman himself had worked as a clerk in 3 different Federal Departments.
Political ideologues like Abrams distrust and disrespect civil service officials. Abrams and his colleagues are most critical of the civil service’s alleged lack of loyalty to the President. However, he forgets and most people never realize that all Civil Servants when they take their oath of office pledge their loyalty to the Constitution and not to the President. Many of them criticize presidential, political party and ideological loyalists like Abrams because even Abrams and other Presidential appointments swear an oath to the Constitution and not the President or a political party.
John Kenneth Galbraith OC, also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official and intellectual. A leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism, his books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s. As an economist, he leaned toward post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective.
