We, the Office of the County Executive, did a staff retreat Friday in the Arlington Echo dining hall overlooking the Severn River.
We have a strong team heading into term two, and we like each other, so it was a fun day. It’s a group that pretty much works all the time under a lot of pressure, so we need to take good care of one another and stay fit, at least mentally.
My goal was to inspire. I wanted every member of our team to feel personally invested in and passionate about at least some of the things we hope to accomplish in the next four years. So before leading a discussion on some of our priorities, I told them why I believe our work matters. Here are a few of the things I said:
- The elections that put us in office and kept us there were partisan, but the issues we work on are not - at all. Put the politics behind us.
- Everything we do is about two things. One is figuring out how to get along with one another, and to find peace in our communities across income levels, races, neighborhoods, and industries so that we can achieve prosperity.
- The other is to nurture rather than destroy that which created and sustains us - nature.
- Human beings have always confronted these two challenges, and over many generations built and improved a tool called government as a way to face them. It is an extraordinary honor and responsibility to steward this government in this place and in this time.
- Anne Arundel County is a microcosm of America. We are well-connected and respected, and if we succeed we will be noticed. Others will learn from us.
- Governments build or lose legitimacy, depending on their performance and the public perception of their performance. World history tells us that the stakes are very high.
This legitimacy thing is serious. I majored in Latin American studies at University of Chicago from 1980-1984 to study that topic. What drives the transitions from democracy to authoritarianism and back again? Latin America in that era offered lots of examples, and it always came down to legitimacy. I studied with students who had escaped military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, and protested against US engagements in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Government was a widely respected tool in America from 1933 until 1981 when President Reagan said in his inauguration speech, “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”
It was an effective rallying cry, and it carries a solid kernel of truth, but the strategy of running “against government” built steam over the decades, eventually costing government so much legitimacy that an attack on the United States Capitol to block the transfer of power is today justified by many Americans as “legitimate political discourse.”
I can’t do much to rebuild the legitimacy of our federal government institutions, but if you’re wondering what gets me out of bed in the morning, it’s the prospect that we can do just that here in our little microcosm of America.
If we restore trust in government, we can deploy its tools to nurture one another and our environment. That’s worth doing.
Until next week,
Steuart Pittman
Anne Arundel County Executive