SSADM

A Civil Servant's Poetry:

Here lies what’s left of Michael Juster,
A failure filled with bile and bluster.
Regard the scuttlebutt as true.
Feel free to dance; most others do.

It turns out that the head of the Social Security Administration has a different sort of secret than most in Washington. He's a poet, and a good one. Also a translator of Horace, who renders him with the boldness of wit that Horace doubtless intended:

...why no one’s content
with either what they’ve done or fate has sent,
yet they applaud men taking other trails.
“O lucky businessmen!” the soldier wails,
his body weighted down by age and shattered.
Yet whenever southern winds have battered
his boat, a businessman will surely cry,
“Can’t beat the army life! Don’t you know why?
Two sides will clash, and in a flash you’ll see
a sudden death or joyous victory.”

It's good to know that we have men of intelligence, spirit, and who remember the ancient things. Unfortunately, the article ends, he as other civil servants know "that their political masters would never really stop playing a bloody game of ambition and small-mindedness."

And thus, in spite of men of such quality, here we are.