Federal Government Policy and Business

Commentary: How to work in the new administration when you don’t agree with Trump

Reuters: What do you do when you’re a federal employee working for an administration and you don't agree with its policies?

I have some experience with this question. Ronald Reagan signed my commission when I entered the State Department as a Foreign Service officer, and Barack Obama was president when I retired. Over the intervening 24 years I was present for multiple presidential transitions. Like most of the government, I was rank-and-file, a lifer, not a political appointee chosen by a president to serve only during his term.

There has been a lot of hot-blooded talk about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days and the federal workforce. The media once claimed Trump would not be able to fill his political appointee positions, and now suggest civil servants and intelligence officers will resign en masse. Pundits say Trump is... different, ignoring the fact that change is part of elections, sometimes the point of elections (witness the ideological swings from Carter to Reagan, Bush to Obama). Yet to many in 2017, the current transition appears dramatic, even frightening.

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