ABSTRACT
The animus against government is rooted in anti-elitism, suspicions about rationality and a jealous attitude toward power, especially remote power. The nations that have a high tradition of government service are nations with an aristocratic tradition. In Great Britain, the prime minister and the members of her cabinet, who head the major departments of government, are members of Parliament. In America, bureaucracies have the reputation of being alien, of imposing regulations from afar and of being tangled up in red tape. Politicians, capitalizing on this feeling, often run “against Washington,” promise to get the government off our backs. In France and Japan, the ablest graduates of the leading colleges often aspire to a career of government service; in America, that is far less often the case. Hedrick Smith argues that press conferences are a poor substitute for the close questioning of government officials that occurs in parliamentary systems.
