Unlocking the cabinet: Robert Reich provides an inside look at life in the inner sanctum.

March 2 -- Washington

This afternoon, I mount a small revolution at the Labor Department. The result is chaos.

Background: My cavernous office is becoming one of those hermetically sealed, germ-free bubbles they place around children born with immune deficiencies. Whatever gets through to me is carefully sanitized. Telephone calls are prescreened, letters are filtered, memos are reviewed. Those that don't get through are diverted elsewhere. Only Tom, Kitty, and my secretary walk into the office whenever they want. All others seeking access must first be scheduled, and have a sufficient reason to take my precious germ-free time.

I'm scheduled to the teeth. Here, for example, is today's timetable:

6:45 a.m. Leave apartment

7:10 a.m. Arrive office

7:15 a.m. Breakfast with MB from the Post

8:00 a.m. Conference call with Rubin

8:30 a.m. Daily meeting with senior staff

9:15 a.m. Depart for Washington Hilton

9:40 a.m. Speech to National Association of

Private Industry Councils

10:15 a.m. Meet with Joe Dear (OSHA 

enforcement)

11:15 a.m. Meet with Darla Letourneau (DOL 

budget)

12:00 Lunch with JG from National League

of Cities

1:00 p.m. CNN interview (taped)

1:30 p.m. Congressional leadership panel

2:15 p.m. Congressman Ford

3:00 p.m. NEC budget meeting at White House

4:00 p.m. Welfare meeting at White House

5:00 p.m. National Public Radio interview

(taped)

5:45 p.m. Conference call with mayors

6:15 p.m. Telephone time

7:00 p.m. Meet with Maria Echeveste (Wage and

Hour)

8:00 p.m. Kitty and Tom daily briefing

8:30 p.m. National Alliance of Business reception

9:00 p.m. Return to apartment

I remain in the bubble even when I'm outside the building -- ushered from place to place by someone who stays in contact with the front office by cellular phone. I stay in the bubble after business hours. If I dine out, I'm driven to the destination and escorted to the front door. After dinner, I'm escorted back to the car, into the apartment building, into the elevator, and to my apartment door.

No one gives me a bath, tastes my food, or wipes my bottom -- at least not yet. But in all other respects I feel like a goddamn two-year-old. Tom and Kitty insist it has to be this way. Otherwise I'd be deluged with calls, letters, meetings, other demands on my time, coming from all directions. People would force themselves on me, harass me, maybe even threaten me. The bubble protects me.

Tom and Kitty have hired three people to handle my daily schedule (respond to invitations, cull the ones that seem most promising, and squeeze all the current obligations into the time available), one person to ready my briefing book each evening so I can prepare for the next day's schedule, and two people to "advance" me by making sure I get where I'm supposed to be and depart on time. All of them now join Tom and Kitty as guardians of the bubble.

"How do you decide what I do and what gets through to me?" I ask Kitty.

"We have you do and see what you'd choose if you had time to examine all the options yourself -- sifting through all the phone calls, letters, memos, and meeting invitations," she says simply.

"But how can you possibly know what I'd choose for myself?"

"Don't worry," Kitty says patiently. "We know."

They have no way of knowing. We've worked together only a few weeks. Clare and I have lived together for a quarter century and even she wouldn't know.

I trust Tom and Kitty. They share my values. I hired them because I sensed this, and everything they've done since then has confirmed it. But it's not a matter of trust.

The real criterion Tom and Kitty use (whether or not they know it or admit it) is their own experienced view of what a secretary of labor with my values and aspirations should choose to see and hear. They transmit to me through the bubble only those letters, phone calls, memoranda, people, meetings, and events which they believe someone like me ought to have. But if I see and hear only what "someone like me" should see and hear, no original or out-of-the-ordinary thought will ever permeate the bubble. I'll never be surprised or shocked. I'll never be forced to rethink or re-evaluate anything. I'll just lumber along, blissfully ignorant of what I really need to see and hear -- which are things that don't merely confirm my preconceptions about the world.

I make a list of what I want them to transmit through the bubble henceforth:

1. The angriest, meanest ass-kicking letters we get from the public every week.

2. Complaints from department employees about anything.

3. Bad news about fuck-ups, large and small.

4. Ideas, ideas, ideas: from department employees, from outside academics and researchers, from average citizens. Anything that even resembles a good idea about what we should do better or differently. Don't screen out the wacky ones.

5. Anything from the President or members of Congress.

6. A random sample of calls or letters from real people outside Washington, outside government -- people who aren't lawyers, investment bankers, politicians, or business consultants; people without college degrees.

7. "Town meetings" with department employees here at headquarters and in the regions. "Town meetings" in working-class and poor areas of the country. "Town meetings" in community colleges with adult students.

8. Calls and letters from business executives, including those who hate my guts. Set up meetings with some of them.

9. Lunch meetings with small groups of department employees, randomly chosen from all ranks.

10. Meetings with conservative Republicans in Congress.

I send the memo to Tom and Kitty. Then, still feeling rebellious and with nothing on my schedule for the next hour (the NEC meeting scheduled for 3:00 was canceled) I simply walk out of the bubble. I sneak out of my big office by the back entrance and start down the corridor.

I take the elevator to floors I've never visited. I wander to places in the department I've never been. I have spontaneous conversations with employees I'd never otherwise see. Free at last.

Kitty discovers I'm missing. It's as if the warden had discovered an escape from the state pen. The alarm is sounded: Secretary loose! Secretary escapes from bubble! Find the Secretary! Security guards are dispatched.

By now I've wandered to the farthest reaches of the building, to corridors never walked by anyone ranking higher than GS-12. I visit the mailroom, the printshop, the basement workshop.

The hour is almost up. Time to head back. But which way? I'm at the northernmost outpost of the building, in bureaucratic Siberia. I try to retrace my steps but keep coming back to the same point in the wilderness.

I'm lost.

In the end, of course, a security guard finds me and takes me back to the bubble. Kitty isn't pleased. "You shouldn't do that," she says sternly. "We were worried"

"It was good for me." I'm defiant.

"We need to know where you are." She sounds like the mother of a young juvenile delinquent.

"Next time give me a beeper, and I'll call home to see if you need me."

"You must have someone with you. It's not safe."

"This is the Labor Department, not Bosnia."

"You might get lost."

"That's ridiculous. How in hell could someone get lost in this building?"

She knows she has me. "You'd be surprised." She smiles knowingly and heads back to her office.

April 29 -- Washington

"The White House wants you to go to Cleveland." Kitty is sitting next to my desk, reading from her daily list of Things to Tell the Secretary.

"Why?"

She sighs. "Because we're hitting the first hundred days of the Clinton administration and the President along with his entire cabinet are fanning out across America to celebrate, because Ohio is important, because there are a lot of blue-collar voters out there, and because you haven't been to Ohio yet."

"What'll I do out there?" I feel bullied.

Kitty is glancing through the rest of the list while she reels off the obvious. "Visit a factory, go on local TV, meet the Plain Dealer editorial board, plant the flag. It'll be one day. No big deal."

She is about to move to the next item on her list, when I stop her. "Who wants me to go to Cleveland?"

Kitty rolls her eyes. This is going to be another one of those days. When will this guy learn that he has to be a cabinet secretary? "The White House. They called this morning."

"Houses don't make phone calls. Who called?"

"I don't know. Someone from Cabinet Affairs. Steve somebody. I'll schedule it. Now, can we move on?" She looks back at her list.

"How old is Steve?"

She puts down her pad and stares blankly at me. "I have no idea how old he is. What difference does it make? They want you to go to Cleveland. You're going to Cleveland." She picks up her pad. "Now, I have a whole list --"

"I bet he's under thirty."

"He probably is under thirty. A large portion of the American population is under thirty. So what?"

"Don't you see? Here I am, a member of the president's cabinet, confirmed by the Senate, the head of an entire government department with eighteen thousand employees, responsible for implementing a huge number of laws and rules, charged with helping people get better jobs, and who is telling me what to do?" I'm working myself into a frenzy of self-righteousness. "Some twerp in the White House who has no clue what I'm doing in this job. Screw him. I won?t go." Kitty sits patiently, waiting for the storm to pass.

But the storm has been building for weeks, and it won't pass anytime soon. Orders from twerps in the White House didn't bother me at the beginning. Now I can't stomach snotty children telling me what to do. From the point of view of the White House staff, cabinet officials are provincial governors presiding over alien, primitive territories. Anything of any importance occurs in the imperial palace, within the capital city. The provincial governors are important only in a ceremonial sense. They wear the colors and show the flag. Occasionally they are called in to get their next round of orders before being returned to their outposts. They are of course dazzled by the splendor of the court, and grateful for the chance to visit.

The White House's arrogant center is replicated on a smaller scale within every cabinet department. (The Washington hierarchy is, in fact, less like a pyramid than a Mandelbrot set, whose large-scale design is replicated within every component part, and then repeated again inside the pieces of every part.) The Labor Department's own arrogant center is located on the second floor, arrayed around my office. The twenty-somethings Tom and Kitty have assembled regard assistant secretaries with the same disdain that White House staffers have for cabinet officials. And each assistant secretary has his or her own arrogant center, whose twerps treat the heads of regional offices like provincial bumpkins.

"You'll go to Cleveland," Kitty says calmly. "The President is going to New Orleans, other cabinet members are going to other major cities. You're in Cleveland"

"I'll go this time." The storm isn't over, but I know I have no choice. I try to save what's left of my face. "But I'll be damned if I'm going to let them run my life."

In fairness, arrogant centers do serve legitimate purposes. They have a broader perspective than the view from any single province. And it is also occasionally true -- dare I admit it even to myself? -- that provincial governors go native, forgetting that their primary loyalty is to the crown, to the president, rather than to the inhabitants of the territories with whom they deal every day.

But I still hate those snotty kids.

Kitty is about to discuss the next item on her list. I interrupt again. "Next time when the White House gives me an order, find out how old he is. If he's under thirty, don't talk to me until you've checked with someone higher up."

"Yes, boss." Kitty is amused.