The Bulwark Podcast
S2 Ep1005: Michael Lewis: Government Workers Aren't the Corrupt Ones
Fri, 21 Mar 2025
Trump loves to complain about the deep state while Elon claims he's rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse with all his mass firings. But DOGE should be looking higher up the food chain to target the graft: for example, the South African immigrant whose car company would not have gotten off the ground without the taxpayer money he still collects. In contrast, government workers are mainly mission-driven and they're not in it for the money. Michael's new collection of essays takes a look at some of the characters who populate our federal workforce, including people performing small miracles without fame and glory. Plus, the risk of Trump politicizing economic data and his plan to destroy whatever trust people still have in the government. Michael Lewis—and Sarah Vowell, who profiled a record keeper at the National Archives for the new book—join Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes The new book, "Who Is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service" Tim's "Bulwark Takes" on some of the men taken taken to the El Salvador prison camp Adrian's "Huddled Masses" newsletter on ICE deportations based on tattoos George Conway emergency pod on the Paul Weiss law firm caving to Trump Michael's book, "Losers: The Road to Everyplace but the White House" Tim's playlist
Chapter 1: What news stories are being highlighted by Tim?
Hey guys, just a couple of programming notes. There are two news stories that me and my colleagues have our hair on fire about and I did not get to them on this podcast. I want to direct you to where you can find our Scorch Not Takes. For me, it is the continued revelations around the men that we have sent to this world. barbarische El Salvador-Prisonkampfeuer.
Und die Tatsache, dass, laut ihren Anwälten, zumindest ein paar von ihnen tatsächlich nichts illegal gemacht haben, hier legal unter dem venezuelischen temporären Schutzstatus waren und verletzt wurden, basierend auf einer Missverständlichkeit ihrer Tattoos oder einer Regierung, die nicht kümmert oder intensiv schuldig ist. Wir werden die Wahrnehmung herausfinden.
Aber es ist einfach so krass und so unamerikanisch. Ich habe einen 11-Minuten-Rant über das gemacht, als mein Blut letzte Nacht heiß war. Ihr könnt das entweder auf unserem YouTube-Feed oder jetzt, wir verändern das in einen Podcast. Sucht für Bulwark Takes.
in your podcast feed, subscribe to that feed, and then you can see it's under the headline Breaking the New News about the El Salvador Deportations.
So, in addition to that, Adrian Carrasquillo in his newsletter for us, Huddled Masses, writes about this tattoo issue and gives you some historical examples of how the government has screwed this up before, misunderstanding the tattoos of the people that they're detaining. So please go read that as well. One other thing, George Conway,
His hair was on fire over Paul Weiss' law firm's capitulation to Donald Trump. Trump extorted them. It's a complicated story, but essentially an executive order that was going to target the firm because of their work on some of the investigations against Trump.
The head of Paul Weiss went to the White House, groveled, cut some deal where they're going to do 40 million in pro bono services for Trump. It's absolutely insane. George Conway knows all the players. So we taped an emergency episode of George Conway explains it all together. So go check that out on that podcast feed or also on YouTube. So those are the news stories.
We got a good one coming for you next. It is Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame and Sarah Vowell. They have a new book out about who is government, which is very relevant right now, given everything that's happening with Doge. So stick around for that. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
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Chapter 2: Who is Michael Lewis and what is his new book about?
Could not be more delighted to welcome today the pride of Newman High School right around the corner from me. His many books include The Big Short Moneyball and The Blind Side. He's the editor of a new collection of essays, Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service, which came out this week. We'll have one of those essayists, Sarah Vowell, join us in Segment 2.
But first, it's Michael Lewis. What's up, Michael?
Good to see you, Tim. This is maybe the first interview I've ever done where the host is in New Orleans.
Well, there you go. Proud to do it. Walter's never interviewed you?
Not from there. Not from there, no. Walter has interviewed me, but in person in New York.
All right. Well, I could hit your high school with a three wood from here. So we're right in the hood. I've got another... Ich möchte zuerst auf dich wagen, bevor wir in den Buch kommen. Als ich geschrieben habe, warum wir das gemacht haben, das war meine Reflexion darauf, wie die Republikanische Partei dort ist, hat der Redakteur mich gefragt, welches Buch ich nachmodellieren wollte.
Ich gab ihm zwei Bücher. Einer davon war «Losers». Your 1996 campaign book that is maybe the least acclaimed of all your works. But I loved it because you did not get boxed in by the conventions of political reporting and treated the characters as three-dimensional people. And it's just delightful. So people are looking for a political book that is from a time when the stakes were much lower.
Losers is a good one. But anyway, what are your reflections on that book?
Ich musste nicht ein Buch schreiben, ich wurde von der Neuen Republik ausgesucht, um die 96-Kampagne zu beenden. Das Zentrum von Dingen, Dole vs. Clinton, war so dumm und so kontrolliert, dass ich eine Art und Weise gefunden habe, es mit einer anderen Stimme umzusetzen. Konventionell würde es schmerzhaft sein.
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Chapter 3: Why are government workers not the corrupt ones?
Then, you're just looking at Clinton and Dole, you'd never guess what would happen.
Hell no. No, that's right. All right. Well, to that point about government, that's this sort of who is government, what does government do well, is, I guess, the central thesis to the book. Pretty relevant now, given what has happened with Elon. So I'm wondering if you could share with the audience some of the people you feature broadly.
And I guess I was wondering, have any of them got the axe yet? Have any of the people in the book?
Briefly, let me explain the project. Together with David Shipley, the former opinion editor of the Washington Post, I went out and hired writers I just loved. And they aren't conventional journalists. Most of them are sort of performers, novelists, people who are really talented at making material entertaining.
It was Sarah Val, Dave Eggers, Kamau Bell, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, and Casey Sepp. A wide variety of voices, basically. Dropped them into the government and said, just find a story. And I did this because I had written a book während Trump 1, der fünfte Risiko, wo ich einfach überrascht war, wie qualitativ das Material in der Regierung ist.
Ich meine, Trump hat mich dazu geworfen, daran interessiert zu werden. Und ich habe nicht erwartet, dass die Qualität der Charaktere, die da waren, die Bedeutung der Mission. Ich meine, man kann überlegen, was die Regierung tun sollte, aber wir alle stimmen, dass sie einige Dinge tun sollte. Und es gibt Orte, wo Leute Dinge tun, die niemand anderes tun wird.
Und du bist nur dankbar, dass sie sie tun. Und sie sind großartige Charaktere und sie kennen ihre Charaktere nicht. And their stories never get told for a whole bunch of reasons, which we can talk about if you want to get into that. So we launched these real talented writers at this beast. I did two of the eight pieces. And they're long. I mean, my first was like 13,000 words. And out came...
Wie eine wunderschöne Reihe von Geschichten. Also habe ich geschrieben. Der erste Teil des Buches geht um einen Mann namens Chris Mark, der das Problem der Kohle-Miner-Rüben löst, die auf die Hände der Kohle-Miner fallen, was sehr komisch klingt, aber es ist ein Problem, das 50.000 Kohle-Miner in Amerika zerstört.
Du hättest gedacht, dass die Kohle-Kompanien daran gearbeitet hätten.
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Chapter 4: What are some stories from the new book 'Who Is Government'?
Sarah Val, mit der du später sprechen wirst. Ich lasse das auf einer Seite, weil sie über die Nationalen Archive geschrieben hat und eine Frau, die sie runtern hilft. Ein Stück, das völlig unerwartet war. John Lanchester, den ich einfach liebte. Englischer Schriftsteller.
Er kam rein und sagte, ich weiß, dass du mich wahrscheinlich über die Person reden möchtest, aber mein Charakter ist der Konsumpreisindex. Er sagte, es ist grundlegend für das Vereinigte Staates, dass es Dinge zählt. Es kann keine Macht zählen, ohne dass es Menschen für einen Zensus zählt. Und es ist in der Verfassung geschrieben.
Und das Vereinigte Staates ist der größte Zähler von Dingen in der Welt. Und was es zählt, ist unglaublich. Und es bietet im Grunde Porträte unserer Gesellschaft und der Gesellschaft anderer Menschen mit sehr vorsichtigem Statistik-Kollektion und Analyse.
And he just takes one of these things, the CPI, and shows just how hard it is to do this well, just what a monumental achievement it is, and just actually, incidentally, how at risk it would be in nefarious hands. We trust it. We just assume that whoever is doing it is doing their best.
So what is it? What would be the downside of the CPI, of us putting Corey Lewandowski in charge of the CPI and then just making it whatever Trump thinks is the best?
Well, if we don't actually know what inflation is, I mean, for a start, the Federal Reserve won't know how to adjust policy. I mean, it will sow confusion into the minds of people. People will have to kind of guess what was happening with prices. You know, that in and of itself, it'd be interesting to see what happened if you just actually totally politicized it.
There are no hints that they're thinking this way. They fired a bunch of experts who helped the Department of Labor Statistics investigate.
improve it and the next step would be oh you don't get to release it out of the department of labor statistics we're going to release it out of the white house well you understand so they complain about the job because you know job numbers come out and then they get adjusted right and so you you know after as you get more information coming in you already heard them during the biden years saying that these guys are cooking the books because a couple times it got adjusted down from what it initially had been said and so you use that as a pretext to just say we don't trust these guys are political actors what we'll we'll decide ourselves
So that's right out of the Trump playbook, that if you want to know what he's going to do, see what he's accusing other people of doing. Usually falsely. He's a master of bearing false witness. He operates within the limits of his imagination. His imagination is spurred by the awful things he can imagine other people doing. It's usually fantasy. He's had the idea then, that oh, you can do this.
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Chapter 5: How does politicizing economic data pose a risk?
Nein, lass uns das machen.
This is what the people want.
I mean, the list of disturbing things is so long, but the ones that maybe not have been as attended to as they should have, the probationary workers, the 50,000 workers, these are people who were in their first year of government service.
Or who have been promoted recently.
That might be true.
Yeah, it's the first year of service, or it's like you worked at some sub-agency and got promoted and took the job at a different sub-agency. You become probationary again, if you've changed. Yeah.
Okay, so you know more about it than I do. But what I do know is that, so there's this period where you don't have, you can just be fired at will, simply, easily. You don't have to go through some process to fire this person. So because they were fireable, they got fired. But think about who those people must be. Almost certainly, they skew extremely young.
Like these are the young people coming into government, which is what we desperately need. I mean, here's a stat for you. In information technology, like the computer systems, Nur 4 % der Mitarbeiter im federalen Regierung sind unter dem Alter von 30 Jahren. 50 % sind über dem Alter von 50 Jahren.
Das bedeutet, dass ein riesiges Anzahl von Leuten, die die IT-Systeme betreffen, nicht wissen, wie sie ihre Telefonen nutzen. Sie schießen also die jungen Leute ab. Und wer sonst schießen sie ab? Sie schießen jemanden ab, der für einen offiziellen Grund gebeten wurde. Wir brauchen diese Person jetzt. Wir brauchen diesen Ingenieur jetzt auf diesem Job, weil das etwas ist, was wir tun müssen.
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges faced by government agencies today?
Yeah, I think he'd have trouble assimilating that fact into his personal narrative.
There's one other thing that is bewildering to me and it'd be nice to have like, this would be like a A small group of people we all agreed were masterful at running big institutions. Like the dude who runs Microsoft. Clearly some kind of genius. People who, CEOs, types, heads of large organizations, maybe even a coach of a football team. And would sit around a table and would say...
Wie viele von euch haben es erzielt, indem sie ins Spiel gegangen sind und die Mitarbeiter oder Spieler verurteilt haben und ihnen gesagt haben, dass sie Idioten waren, dass sie sich für sie verurteilt haben, dass sie sich für sie verurteilt haben, dass sie sich für sie verurteilt haben, dass sie sich verurteilt haben, Und ich denke, sie sagen alle, du würdest das nie machen.
Das ist das Gegenteil, was du tust, wenn du etwas gut runntest. Die einzige Person, die ich kenne, die das gemacht hat, ist Elon Musk auf Twitter. Und es ist eine Art Katastrophe. Ich meine, die Leute, die mit ihm investiert haben, sind nicht glücklich. Das ist ein anderes Kind von Gespräch. Wir haben es nicht. Es ist wie ein Harvard Business School Case Study, wie man nicht etwas runnt.
Well, it's only the federal government. We've only got three and a half more years of it, so no worries there.
Can I ask you a question? Please. I'm just dying to know, because you're living in my hometown. How do you feel my hometown is doing? How do you feel about New Orleans these days?
It's interesting. I stole this from Carville, I think, but all the good about New Orleans outshines all the bad, like makes up for all the bad, because the good is so good. And so, you know, I mean, look, it's got problems. I had to trade in my Mein Volvo, mein Kalifornien-Volvo für einen Jeep, weil man auf den Straßen nicht fahren kann. Die Straßen sind wie ein drittes Weltland.
Sie versuchen, Claiborne-Avenue zu lösen, um sich bereit zu machen für die Superbowl. Und tragisch, sie versuchen, Bourbonstraße zu lösen, um sich bereit zu machen für die Superbowl. Sie haben also diese riesigen... Und sie haben neither of them done. Es ist noch nicht fertig. Die Superbowl kommt vorbei. Das ist schwierig. Aber man, ich weiß nicht. Die Leute hier sind so wundervoll.
And the folks like us who've chosen to come here are interesting. Nobody's moved here because Boeing sent them here. You know what I mean? They've all moved here because there's something they love about the art or music or food or culture or they had a friend or a connection. So that's great. I don't know, that kind of ties me back to you.
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Chapter 7: How do current administration policies affect federal workers?
Sicherheitsnummern? Ja. Das ist einer der Probleme, wenn du es ausrutschst, nur weil es die Wimpe des Kindes ist.
Aber anyway. Also, wie der Census von 1950. Ich habe Dinge über meine eigene Familie gelernt, die ich nicht wusste, dass jeder da ist. Und es ist völlig demokratisch.
Ja.
I learned things I didn't want to know about my family, but you know, you can't pick and choose.
You have a secret great aunt?
I just learned why my mean drunk grandfather was a mean drunk and as a liberal it was a hard lesson because it turns out he worked for the WPA on a road crew and that's how he broke his back and turned into the misanthrope who ruined all our lives. So it's really hard for a liberal to know that the New Deal is responsible for an entire family crumbling for decades.
We've got to close with the one political element to this that's related because it's very relevant.
One?
Well, there are a lot. But the one acutely political story that is related to your story, which is Colleen Shogan, which is that Trump fired the archivist, the head archivist, Pamela's boss.
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