Politics & Power Quote by Alexis Herman

Herman’s line is a neat piece of late-90s political jujitsu: it sells government as both opportunity and restraint, a paradox meant to disarm two audiences at once. On the surface, she’s responding to the perennial knock that the public sector is bloated, inefficient, or a jobs program for the politically connected. So she does something clever. She names a specific agency, the Department of Labor, and frames it in market language: “available,” “open,” “good paying.” That phrasing is deliberately transactional, almost private-sector coded, turning federal employment into a practical option rather than an ideological statement.

The subtext is defensive and aspirational. Defensive, because the 1990s were thick with “reinventing government” rhetoric and bipartisan pressure to shrink federal payrolls. By insisting the government is “retrenching under President Clinton’s leadership,” Herman signals fiscal discipline and managerial seriousness, a pre-emptive answer to critics who equate Democratic governance with expansion. Aspirational, because she’s also pitching public service as legitimate upward mobility, especially for workers for whom “good paying jobs” isn’t a think-tank abstraction but rent, childcare, stability.

Context matters: Clinton-era Democrats were trying to hold the center, marrying technocratic competence to pro-worker symbolism. Herman, as Labor Secretary, occupies that intersection. Her intent isn’t to romanticize bureaucracy; it’s to rebrand it. Government can hire you, pay you well, and still be trimming itself. That’s the political trick: promising security without looking indulgent.