Confessions of a Wayward Academic

by Tom Corbett

  As it turned out, all my various and eclectic experiences as a young man served me well in recent years. As I stress in chapter ten, being a great policy wonk is more than numbers. You need a breadth of experiences that provides a broader perspective. You need to see issues and possibilities in a holistic way. Without knowing it, I managed to create an array of experiences that would serve me well. It was another piece of serendipity.

  If there were one piece of baggage I brought with me into adulthood, it was the dreaded “imposter syndrome.” I could not accept the feedback I started receiving in college that I was smart, even a leader that others might follow. After all, I had once been put in the slow class in elementary school and did not graduate in the top quarter of my high school class. There were scant indications of any future academic success in my performance as a young man. The strong sense that I was just the most average of working-class kids, faking it in academia and among the policy elite, stayed with me far too long in life. I don’t believe I ever fully shook off the crippling residual harm that came with embracing that script. Fortunately, I managed to achieve much despite that enervating impediment.

  In the end, I cannot overstate how fortunate I feel. Sure, I wish I had done more non-academic writing earlier, but I am making up for lost time now. I am now moved to repeat something I have uttered so often that I fear putting readers into a coma from endless repetition. I was this damn lucky guy who literally fell into a career that perfectly matched who I was. I flew around the country and worked on many of society’s most complex and controversial issues. In doing so, I had an opportunity to interact with many caring and competent people from all walks of life. I had the opportunity to engage the most brilliant social policy minds and researchers of my generation. And somebody paid me to do this. That was better than stealing. Come to think of it, maybe it was a form of stealing.

  Amazingly, I did all this absent much observable talent, a statement of fact and not my imposter syndrome rearing up. Real life skills have always eluded me. An example from early in my marriage, I foolishly tried to put oil in our car all by myself. I did this just once, to save a little money. When the oil immediately gushed out, I realized I had poured it in the wrong hole. Who knew I had a decision to make about this or that I should have looked at some manual? So, I dragged myself in the house and asked my long-suffering wife to call a garage. I begged her to tell them she did it, and to ask if this was a fatal error of some sort. Amazingly, she did this for me. She still liked me back then. That may very well have been the final practical task I ever attempted in my life.

  All in all, though, erecting my allegorical candy store has been a marvelous run. Now, at the end of this run, I think back on what I did bring to the table, what I think those most successful as policy wonks need to bring to the table. I have long considered some of these essential softer skills and dispositions. Here is the list of what I have come up with and which I promised to share with you back in chapter one:

  Humor. I think being able to laugh at yourself and with others is important to doing policy. While the issues are critical to the well-being of society, and the debates can be so vitriolic, humor helps us keep a sense of perspective in an otherwise deadly endeavor. I have prided myself on bringing laughter wherever I have worked. Really, how many times have I heard people say, “Corbett…that guy is such a joke!” Once, when I was in a very serious meeting in the old executive office of the White House, chaired by Clinton’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor (DPA), I had just finished up a dress rehearsal for my part of a critical meeting that was coming up. The DPA said my remarks were very good but needed to be shortened. “No problem,” I quipped, “I’ll just cut out every other word.” She stared at me blankly, not the slightest hint of a smile. This town, I said to myself, really needs to lighten up.

  Inquisitiveness. It is helpful if you are always seeking out new things, never being quite satisfied by your known and comfortable world. I am reminded of Irish twin girls who grew up in a Chicago Irish neighborhood. When very young, they would spend many an hour looking out their front window at the busy street below. As adults, they realized they were looking at different things. One did look down at the street below, happy with the doings of her Irish neighbors. Her twin sister, in contrast, recalled always looking up the street and wondering what was around the corner. The inquisitive one grew up to get a Ph.D. in Russian studies and spent her life as a policy wonk in D.C., including heading Senator Ted Kennedy’s staff for a while. The other spent her life as a wife and mother in Chicago. Here they were, biological twins, same family environment, yet so different in perspective, and yet each happy with their life choices. One knew from early childhood that she wanted to push the envelope and explore new challenges. She was born to a life of public policy. Her twin was happy with the world as is. It was as if they were wired differently.

  Conceptual elasticity. You need to be able to adapt when your givens are challenged by new information, new theories, and new ways of looking at things. I read a memoir by Claire Conner about her childhood. Growing up in a John Birch household, her father was a founding member of this ultra-right-wing group. As an adult, she pulled away from her early indoctrination and started asking questions on her own. She lamented the fact that her parents were stuck in the same place. In their world, there were communists everywhere, and America would go down the drain in six months unless they did something drastic. When six months had passed, and the apocalypse failed to arrive, the day of doom was reset to another six months out. Their script never, ever changed, they were bound in a rigid form of structured, self-reinforcing paranoia. The ability to absorb new information and adapt accordingly is critical to doing policy work. Rigidity of thought or personality is the death of a good policy wonk. The ability to absorb and integrate conflicting input is essential. You must accommodate new things from the world around you.

  Caring. I think you must care about things outside yourself, perhaps another trait that is internally wired at birth. I recall listening to radio talks by Dr. Tom Dooley, a Catholic physician who worked in South East Asia where the communists were making inroads in the 1950s. I can vividly recall wanting desperately to grow up to live a life of equal sacrifice. Of course, this was before I realized how cowardly and debauched I was. It is quite easy to be a technical policy wonk and not really care about the issues and people who are the objects of your efforts. You can strive to contribute, but not get overly involved.

  Sense of tribe. I think having what I call a large-tribe perspective is critical to doing policy. By that I mean having an ability to think beyond yourself, your family, and the intimate groups you identify with. Many people fall into the “us versus them” perspective very easily, and I don’t feel they make good policy types. As I see it, they have a harder time seeing the big picture. Again, a vignette from my sordid past! Even as a very young teenager, perhaps a pre-teen, I recall thinking that we should share more of our agricultural abundance with those in need around the world. It really bothered me that we had so much and others so little. Really, given the tribal attitudes of those around me back then, where in the world could that sentiment have come from? In fact, I recall wanting (and I think I did) to join something called the World Federalists Society—a bunch of one-world types. It was probably a communist front organization, but it made sense to me. As I recall, it was one of two organizations I joined in my early years; the other being the Boston Celtics Junior Booster Club, not quite on the same level as a bunch of one-world advocates.

  Imagination. I also think that doing policy demands a lot of imagination. Some people may call this lateral thinking, or the ability to see beyond the obvious or outside the box. It may involve seeing relationships among disparate things that are not obviously connected or perceiving causal connections that others miss. It may involve leaping to new explanations where others are stuck in old ruts. This is less an ability to integrate conflicting input as opposed to bringing together facts and ideas that don’t s
eem related to one another at all. For that, you need to be able to dream. Perhaps there even is a bit of the Celtic muse in this trait, or the ability to express things in a compelling manner. Now, is there any evidence that I had a touch of this trait in my early years? Perhaps this is a stretch, but I remember my mother telling me to take out the garbage. This meant taking it down three flights of stairs and putting it in the garbage pail for pick up later that week. In that short trip, I would often slip off into my overactive imagination somewhere; coming back to reality a block or two away, still carrying a load of garbage to some unknown destination. I would scurry home, hoping the neighbors were not shaking their heads going, “Poor Mrs. Corbett, there goes her addled boy again. She has such a hard life.” Having survived adolescence without being committed as delusional, I found a vivid imagination to be able to let my mind wander, to be helpful in thinking through difficult issues and seeing possibilities others don’t.

  Adaptability. You need to be able to listen to those who have different points of view. You don’t have to change your world view, but carefully listen to others; even if on first blush, you don’t agree. Seek out both ideas and people that contradict your priors, don’t be afraid of debate whether it is out in the open or within your own private thoughts. We get better when we can confront diverse and conflicting input and still come out of the process with a coherent world view. When teaching, I would often assign readings from conservative authors to the more liberal students, and the more liberal screeds to the more conservative students; and make them argue the positions expressed in the paper or book. Yes, sadism came easily to me. It really can be fun being the teacher.

  Guilt. Let me end my short list with the attribute of guilt. Is this really an essential trait for doing policy? Hell if I know! It just seems to me that many who try this avocation have guilt to spare. I recall my Peace Corps group, we spent two years in India back in the 1960s; more than once talking about why each of us had joined up. We kept returning to the guilt we often felt at having so much while others had so little. We often noted the predominance of Catholics and Jews among us—two groups known to make excess guilt a matter of personal pride. I myself have gone through life waking up and immediately beginning to apologize to no one in particular…well, to my wife, I suppose. Mea culpa (my fault or sin) became my personal mantra. If I hadn’t yet done anything wrong that day, it was only a matter of minutes until I did, perhaps even seconds. It could be that the felt need to do good in some larger sense was a way of expiating all the bad I had done—real and imagined. In the end, just a little bit of guilt may well push you to remedy the things you see as wrong with the world.

  It is a list that not many possess. Great policy wonks, to some extent, are born and not made but you can do a lot to refine these attributes. At the end of the day, the best part of my career was the many laughs along the way. I was introducing several federal officials to a group of state officials one day. The federal folk included Don Oellerich, Howard Rolston, and Ann Segal. I started by saying how too many people view federal workers negatively. In my experience, however, I found most of them to be very intelligent, highly competent, hardworking, and totally dedicated to doing the best possible job. Then I paused as I felt that little devil inside getting the best of me. Out it came, “Unfortunately, none of those good people could be with us today.” I could not help myself. I never could help myself. You can stop wondering why I get no cards at Christmastime!

  They threw me a retirement party as I stepped down from administrative work and teaching. It was a rather lavish affair. I suspect they wanted to guarantee that I did not change my mind. I recall telling those assembled that I had enjoyed a dream career beyond anything I had any right to expect. It was like romping through a policy candy store with no adults to keep me in check.

  Yes, I enjoyed the students (most of them anyways) and I found teaching very rewarding. I even tolerated the administrative duties at IRP, mostly because of the superb staff I had to work with and the knowledge that I was helping to sustain a worthwhile institution. I also enjoyed the onerous but necessary task of fund-raising to an extent, perhaps because I proved better at it than I ever would have imagined. And I admit to enjoying some of the research functions attached to my position in the academy, though I was not by disposition a natural researcher. I am merely a guy beset with natural curiosity. Mostly, of course, I enjoyed tilting at all those ‘wicked’ policy problems that seemed to elude easy solution. I cannot say I solved many of them, but I gave it a good shot in most cases.

  One last thought! Now it is the time for another generation of younger, less weary, adventurers to tilt at windmills and try for their own version of the holy grail. Yes, it will remain a difficult, frustrating avocation but so much remains to be done. Fortunately for the next generation, my colleagues and I have left many windmills out there for besotted young knights to tilt their lances toward. Some bright young men or women with passion and the right values need to step up and take on such issues. Don’t be afraid of failure. In the end, the reward comes from the effort, the journey itself. Trust me on that.

  If students were to find their way to my door these days and ask me if they should pursue a career doing policy, what would I now say? I might just say what I said so many years ago. If you care about the rules we live by, about everyone getting a fair shot in life, go for it. If you have guts, a high tolerance for pain, and can see the big picture, then let no one stand in your way! If you can imagine a just and more equitable world, permit nothing or no one to divert you from your vision. Besides, it sure beats the hell out of working for a living!

  KEY SOURCES AND OTHER RESOURCES

  BOOKS REFERENCED IN TEXT:

  Campbell, D. and J. Stanley. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1963.

  Conner, Claire. Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right. Boston: Beacon Press, 2013.

  Confessions of a Clueless Rebel (Hancock Press, 2018)

  Palpable Passions (Papertown Press, 2017)

  Tenuous Tendrils (Xlibris Press, 2017)

  The Boat Captain’s Conundrum (Xlibris Press, 2016)

  Ouch, Now I Remember (Xlibris Press, 2015)

  Browsing through My Candy Store (Xlibris Press, 2014)

  Return to the Other Side of the World with Mary Jo Clark, Michael Simmonds, Katherine Sohn, and Hayward Turrentine (Strategic Press, 2013)

  The Other Side of the World with Mary Jo Cark, Michael Simonds, and Hayward Turrentine (Strategic Press, 2011)

  Evidence-Based Policymaking with Karen Bogenschneider (Taylor and Francis Publishing, 2010)

  Policy into Action with Mary Clare Lennon (Urban Institute Press, 2003)

  Ellwood, David. Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family. New York: Basic Books, 1988

  Handler, Joel and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth. The Deserving Poor: A Study of Welfare Administration. New York: Academy Press, 1971

  Mead, Lawrence. Beyond Entitlement. New York: Free Press, 1986

  Moffitt, Robert and M. Ver Ploeg. Evaluating National Welfare Reform. National Academy of Sciences Press: Washington D.C., 2001

  Murray, Charles. Losing Ground. New York: Free Press, 1984

  Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2014

  SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS BY AUTHOR

  House Training a Policy Wonk (Chapter 2)

  Worker-Client Interactions and Case Level Decision-making: An Exploratory Study. (February 1988) Report to the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services. (With Irving Piliavin.)

  “Errors in AFDC Payments.” (Winter 1979) In Social Work Research and Abstracts. (With I. Piliavin and S. Masters.)

  “Administrative and Organizational Influences on AFDC Case Decision Errors: An Empirical Analyses.” IRP: DP #542-79, University of Wisconsin–Madison. (With I. Piliavin and S. Masters.)

  “An Introduction to CHIPPS: The 1985 Wisconsin
Survey of Children, Income, and Program Participation.” (February 1986) IRP: University of Wisconsin–Madison.

  “Public Sector Innovation: A Case Study of the Child Support Data System.” (1984) IRP: University of Wisconsin–Madison. (Report for IBM Corporation.)

  Welfare Wars (Chapters 3-5)

  “Recreating Social Assistance: Perspectives of the WELPAN Network.” Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin (2002).

  “The New Face of Welfare: From Income Transfers to Social Assistance?” Focus, Vol. 22, no. 1 (2002).

  “The New Face of Welfare: Perspectives of the WELPAN Network.” Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin (2000).

  “Reallocation, Redirection, and Reinvention: Learning from Welfare Reform in an Era of Policy Discontinuity.” An unpublished paper first presented at the American Sociology Association meetings in San Francisco (1998).

  “Changing Family Formation Behavior through Welfare Reform.” Rebecca Maynard, Elisabeth Boehnen, Tom Corbett, and Gary Sandefur with Jane Mosley. In Welfare, the Family, and Reproduction Behavior. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, pp. 134–176 (1998).

  “Informing the Welfare Debate: Introduction and Overview,” in Informing the Welfare Debate: Perspectives in the Transformation of Social Policy. (University of Wisconsin–Madison: Institute for Research on Poverty), IRP Special Report #70, April 1997, pp. 1–24.