Commentary: Value‐Driven Public Policy Likely Requires Value‐Driven Public Servants

• Published date: 01 July 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12241
• Date: 01 July 2014

494 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 494–495. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12241.

Commentary

Hank Sheinkopf, who has worked on

an estimated 700 political campaigns on

four continents, comments on public issues

for major media outlets internationally. He is

also a doctoral candidate in political science

at the City University of New York.

E-mail: hank@sheinkopf.com

Hank Sheinkopf

Sheinkopf Communications

 e question for practical politicians has always been

the same: where’s mine?

 ose who believe that such a sentiment is only

ref‌l ective of the old-time political machines and

hold strongly to the notion that personal gain has

somehow been replaced with an unbreakable daily

search for the greater good have missed a good deal

of news.

Scandal incessantly headlines the newspapers and

tops the local and national evening news.  e work

of our local legislators is graded by the quality and

size of the pork brought home from state capitals.

 ere is a good deal of evidence to suggest that our

representatives in Congress are judged dif‌f erently

than they once were in Richard Fenno’s 1978 classic,

Home Style: House Members in  eir Districts. Fenno

described an adaptation and concern for local culture,

local constituencies, and service. Today, it is all those

things plus acute responses to the polarized environ-

ment in Washington pitting party against party. Since

passage of the Af‌f ordable Care Act (ACA), partisan-

ship has been extreme, but, judging by the actions

of some Democratic U.S. senators now criticizing

the ACA—also called Obamacare—whose constitu-

ents can be described as marginal or swing, survival

and where’s-mine politics are more the case than

not. Survival is the f‌i rst rule, and survival means

reelection.

Value-Driven Public Policy Likely Requires Value-Driven

Public Servants