"The public and the media do not have some constitutional 

 responsibility to see issues the way the government bureaucrat 

 happens to see them." 



relationship but it is a critically important one and I will try to focus 

 on some of the dimensions that I've seen in the three years that I have 

 been a state bureaucrat. I should point out that for 40 years I was 

 not at the public trough, and during the years I have been, I have 

 lost 14 pounds. More than ten years ago, before I came to Colorado, I 

 lived in the research triangle area of North Carolina, where three 

 rather substantial universities are, and where I worked for the church 

 in an urban planning capacity. During that time I became somewhat 

 involved in politics in that area, and my father had been a state 

 politician for years as had his father. The family has been fooling 

 around with politics longer than my memory can run back through the 

 family tree. But I was to be put up for chairman of the party for 

 Orange County, North Carolina. And Orange County is divided 

 between the liberal end at the University of North Carolina and the 

 conservatives over in Hillsborough, where quote, "The good ole boys 

 live." And the party caucus was going to be in Hillsborough, and I 

 was from Chapel Hill and I was to go up there and my name was going 

 to be put in nomination for being chairman of the party for the county. 

 I called up my father the day before and said, "I'm pretty nervous 

 about this. What should I do?" And he said, "Well, give them a firm 

 handshake, look them in the eye and tell them the truth." So I did 

 that, and in fact, was elected first vice-chairman of the party to be 

 chairman the next year. And I came home delighted with things. Dad 

 was off somewhere and I couldn't get him on the phone when I called 

 around eight or nine o'clock that night. I went to bed and after I a.m. 

 that next morning, the phone rang at my house and it was the old man 

 on the phone. And he said, "What the hell did you do over there?" 

 He also added "boy." That's kind of a southern thing. And I said, 

 "Well, I looked them in the eye and I gave'em a firm handshake and I 

 told'em the truth." And he said, "Well you sure didn't have the facts 

 when you told'em the truth. The person you replaced as chairman of 

 the party owns the fishing pond that I go to every weekend." 



The administrator and the media, I think, has to do with 

 directness, but it also has to do with the facts and it is not given to 



