The Spirit of Public Administration

Abstract

A lifetime award can be a mixed blessing. As my daughter Ashley has observed, a lifetime award means you must really be getting old. I think she has decided it means entering the mode that my computer calls, “stand-by, energy saver.” Then again, last week at dinner my wife Beverley said, “I don't mean this to sound morbid, but I don't know a lot of what you've done to get this award. Don't you think it would be a good idea to write out your obituary?” As always, I am grateful for Beverley's advice, but I told her the first thing I had to do was write this talk for tonight. And the first thing I must do tonight is to thank all of you for coming to hear it. I know there are many other things you could have chosen to do after a hard day of conferencing. You are here voluntarily. That is a strange thing for me, since I am used to lecturing to people who are there only because the material is going to be on an exam. So I thank you and hope there will not be too many who are thinking after the lecture (as my departed co-author Aaron Wildavsky might have put it), “better he should have written the obituary.”

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