The Joy of Governing

By Hugh Sidey

Helene von Damm, for several weeks now, has been in search of the great exodus. It is proving elusive. Not a bird or a plane, the great exodus is a phenomenon whose advent is confidently predicted by journalists every two years: the mass departure of political appointees from the Federal Government. Once in a while the journalists are correct. Lack of money, 18-hour days, media prying and policy failures send droves of discouraged reformers back to the family business.

It is now great-exodus season for the Reagan Administration. Von Damm, who is personnel director for the President, heeded the warnings and prepared lists of possible replacements after the governmental churning. But Von Damm cannot seem to capture a full-bodied great exodus.

The suspicion is growing that it may not come to be. One reason: for the first time since the days of John Kennedy, an extraordinary number of young people are aware of just how much fun it can be to serve their country, even with the low pay and long hours. Viet Nam and Watergate soured a generation on governing. The Reagan revolution holds out the prospect of change to people of all political persuasions (those in like it, those out want to be in to stop it). And big political and governmental movement is tremendously exhilarating.

Not long ago, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, 40, swooped onto the aircraft carrier Midway in the Sea of Japan. As he settled on the flight deck in his A6, it occurred to him that the keel of that ship was laid a year after he was born. Now he was managing the Midway and her sister ships, helping to devise a new American defense. "I could go out and make money," he mused. But then, with great relish, he added: "It would not be one-tenth as much fun."

A few weeks ago, Peter McPherson, 41, was breakfasting in Beirut when there was a shattering explosion in the air. He leaped to his feet to watch a plummeting Syrian MiG. The reality of his job as Reagan's Special Representative for Relief and Reconstruction in Lebanon came home. Raised on a Michigan farm of 500 acres, McPherson now tends U.S. aid in 60 countries round the globe.

Robin West's father is a Pennsylvania banker used to dealing in tens of millions. The son, now 36 and an Assistant Secretary of the Interior, helps manage a budget of $6 billion and devised the offshore-oil leasing scheme that produced up to $10 billion in federal revenues last year. A while back, West flew over Alaska's Beaufort Sea, the site of oil exploration, and decided he was in the middle of one of the last great Western adventures. "My God," he said, "it is exhilarating!"

David Gergen, 40, the White House communications director, is pondering his future after seven years with three different Presidents. He planned to stay with Reagan for six months, and still is there. Why? "Because," he said, "there is, after many bad years, a chance to make the presidency work again." There is, too, the grandeur and sweep of the office. "It came home to me," recalled Gergen, "on the day we had breakfast at the Versailles economic summit, met with the Pope in Rome at noon and had dinner with the Queen at Windsor."

Three weeks ago, about 50 friends of Robert Hormats', retiring Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, gave him a farewell roast at Washington's Mayflower Hotel. Hormats, at 39, is a grand old man of global negotiating. To send him off they showed pictures from his twelve years in Government: Hormats with Pope Paul VI, Hormats with Jerry Ford, Hormats with Nelson Rockefeller. The evening's message was mellow and misty and it said one thing: Bob Hormats could not do what he has done any place else, and when he's earned a little money he'll be back.

Jim Rowe knows. Now 73, he worked for Franklin Roosevelt a long time ago. "There are no better jobs in the world," he said last week. "I haven't done anything so important since."

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