Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

by George Packer

It’s hard to understand if you’ve never been on the inside, but at the level where big decisions are made, government work can destroy people. It destroyed Les Aspin, who wept and begged Clinton not to let him go and was dead of a stroke within fifteen months. Officials work killingly hard under nonstop pressure for relatively low pay (Holbrooke’s went from more than $1 million in 1992 to $123,000 the next year). They endure fourteen-hour days, endless meetings, mountains of paperwork, and a merciless press. But their egos, large by definition, find no objective standard to measure their performance—no annual bonus, popular vote, batting average, best-seller list—so they have to look for other ways, demeaning ones, to assure themselves that they’re on top: office location, high-level meetings, presidential favor. The only way they can be sure of doing well is at the expense of others. If someone is winning the room, someone else is losing it. Everyone’s stock is moving up or down every day, and if they ever lose track of their price, it’s too late. So the nation’s vital business is carried out amid humiliating pettiness.