Holy moly, this quote from a top Obama official.

[tularetom]

76. Well, its true that you have more opportunity at the local level to do your own advocacy

If there was an issue I felt strongly about, the local service clubs were always looking for speakers and I knew I would have an opportunity to pitch my proposal to people who had some influence over my bosses. Of course, sometimes my bosses resented my doing that, but I had been around longer than most of them and I knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak. And they knew I knew, so normally I was able to push things through. Once or twice I got cocky, as I said, and pushed too hard and I got rewarded for my carelessness with a few months of unemployment .

I guess my point is, as a public employee in local government, you have a better opportunity to influence public policy, but you have to become somewhat of a politician yourself.

I don't see how you guys at the federal level could deal with it. I would have gone nuts from the lack of autonomy.