Why Young People Must Be Part of the Administration

In a New York Times opinion piece, former Bush Administration appointee and law professor Thomas Schweich argues that it is imperative that inexperienced "kids" not be allowed to takeover the Obama administration and fill it's ranks with inexperienced know-it-all's. In short, it's time for Very Serious Old People to take over.

“YOU know you have arrived when you get interviewed by the 29-year-old instead of the 22-year-old,” the 57-year-old foreign service officer said to me with a laugh. It was late 2005, and this three-time ambassador had just been interviewed for a top post at the Department of State.

Her interviewer was part of a large corps of 20-somethings — some were in their early 30s — who ran the Office of Presidential Personnel. Many of them were sons or daughters of supporters of President George W. Bush. Others had connections through congressmen. With few exceptions, they had one thing in common: very little experience and a very big attitude. [...]

My own experience is typical. I had three jobs in the Bush administration: ambassador for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan, deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement affairs and chief of staff of the United States mission to the United Nations.

For two of these jobs, my appointment was preceded by an effort by a 20-something in personnel to place an unqualified friend in the job. (In the third instance, the State Department went out of its way to avoid the personnel office by appealing directly to a senior assistant to the president.) For one of the jobs, two State Department officials, John Bolton and Anne Patterson, had to intervene.

In the worst cases, the “kids” — as many of us called them — would search for a candidate and eventually conclude, like Dick Cheney when he was the head of George W. Bush’s vice presidential search team, that they were the best candidates for the jobs.

I don't think anyone would argue that it's appropriate for a 22 year old with no foreign policy experience to be conducting interviews and making hiring recommendations on high level foreign policy staffers. Then again, I don't think anyone would ever accuse the Bush Administration, for which Schweich expresses "a great deal of admiration," of being the paragon of best practices when it comes to personnel hiring (Brownie, anyone?). Nevertheless, Schweich does have a point - government should be staffed by experienced and serious people who can bring something of value to the table.

Where Schweich's argument goes off the rails is in assuming that no young person (30 or under, by his own definition) could ever fit that description.

Today's young people did not create the many challenges we face as a nation, but we are the ones who will live with those problems the longest. It's only fair that we have a seat at the table in determining how the next administration will tackle those challenges.

I'm not suggesting that we have 25 year-olds run cabinet departments. But surely there are positions of authority within each department of the administration that could be filled by young people. Millennials have displayed a great level of seriousness and commitment to solving the major crises we now face. We are leaders in the fight for a clean energy economy, LGBT and immigrant rights. As the most uninsured age demographic, we have a particularly high stake in solving the nation's health care crisis. It is our friends who are fighting on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we are the veterans returning from those conflict zones.

There are any number of young researchers, post-docs, lawyers, veterans and activists who could bring new insights into government and provide a perspective that our leaders too often lack. And as digital natives, Millennials have a unique understanding not available to many Older, More Serious People as to how new technologies can be used in constructing those solutions.

In short, young people should not be hired into these positions as a reward for supporting Obama. Rather, they should be hired because they are skilled and want to serve our country and can do so in a way that older applicants are unable. Today's young leaders deserve a chance to make that case directly to the administration. They should not dismissed out of hand by people like Schweich because of a few bad experiences with what is undoubtedly one of the worst administrations in our nation's history.