University of Virginia Library

Stein Guides NEP

CD/ Walter

those goals are can go a long way toward explaining how our
national experience is developing. Obviously, the
administration feels it is attempting to do what is best for the
American people. But, of course, in the final analysis that
judgments will come from the people themselves.

In the mean time, officials like Herbert Stein go to work
each day, each indirectly managing a small portion of our daily
lives from cavernous offices on Pennsylvania Avenue. Looking
down from his office, across the Potomac, and into the fogged
edges of northern Virginia, one can imagine how it must be
exciting to run the country.

More faith is put in these Washington wise men than I
sometimes think they themselves realize. It no doubt is
exciting and fulfilling to make top-level decisions that affect
the world's economic picture; and the tendency might be to
stay and enjoy the excitement forever. One must get out of
the marble city, however, to fully comprehend how much
power is concentrated there.

Even if everything an administration does is right (and this
one has done much that is), it is good that we turn them out
after eight years. For Washington is not really part of the
world at all, it is something of a detached command post. It
will probably be illuminating to see how Herbert Stein assesses
his years in power there after he has lived down in
Charlottesville for a while.