One of the perils of being a wonk in the D.C. swamp is that, every so often, you risk getting dragged into government service.

If you work in Washington, every so often you’ll see it play out on a street corner. Some professional-looking type will be waiting at a crosswalk, tapping at their phone, then: BOOM! Federal agents will skid up in a black SUV, throw them in the vehicle, and race away with the new acting deputy assistant secretary for Arctic circumnavigation (or some such). Yikes! I get the shakes just thinking about it.

Me? I’ve got a strategy to evade the agents. Whenever they try to dragoon me, I point out that government service requires (a) taking direction, (b) sitting in lots of meetings, and (c) dressing like a government official. Since I’m incapable of doing any of that, they turn me loose. That’s how I’ve remained a free-range swamp creature.

Truth is, many who sign up for government service don’t fully grasp what’s ahead. Back in early 2021, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said he wanted to focus on helping students recover academically from the pandemic. Instead, he spent the lion’s share of his time pursuing legally suspect efforts to stick taxpayers with hundreds of billions in student-loan debt and stonewalling Congressional scrutiny of the FAFSA debacle. Aspirations are well and good. But professionals know that government service has a habit of playing out in unexpected ways.

The speculation about whom Trump might appoint as secretary of education was amusing because the avid commentary on her teaching credential or tenure on the Connecticut board of education was so divorced from what the job will entail. Whatever Linda McMahon’s views on accountability or teacher pay, she will, if confirmed, have to clean up after the FAFSA mess, three consecutive failed audits, and student-lending chaos. She’ll have to oversee rulemaking on Title IX and the resolution of investigations into campus antisemitism under Title VI. It’s more “clean your room” than “king for a day.”

Now, plenty of people are nonetheless eager to tackle government service. That’s great. The problem is that so many tend to overestimate the inspiration and underestimate the perspiration. That’s why I suggest those contemplating a role in the Department of Education check out the quasi-journal/sorta-memoir Locked in the Cabinet by Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor. Even though the book is three decades old, politics have changed a lot, and Reich’s views are pretty far from my own, it remains one of the best books I’ve ever read when it comes to giving a real sense of life atop a federal agency.

Reich, a Harvard professor who’d been friends with Clinton for two decades and who’d coordinated Clinton’s economic plan, served four oft-frustrating years in the 42nd president’s cabinet. Reich is brutally honest (and funny) as he tells of hanging out on the sidewalk between the White House and the Old Executive Office Building in hopes of gleaning scraps of intel from passing senior staff.

In Washington, access is power, and the staff who work within steps of the Oval Office typically have more access than even big-name cabinet officials. This can make working in a cabinet agency frustrating. (It also means that those who intuit these dynamics have a leg up.)

But the indignities of high office can be plentiful. Reich describes the role of cabinet officials at various presidential “summits” on the economy or the environment, explaining,

The members of the cabinet don’t have speaking roles. We’re here to show that this is an Important Occasion Which the President Takes Seriously . . . I’m thinking about buying a life-size cardboard cutout of my face and upper torso. The expression on my face will be one of intense interest in what is being said. I’ll ship it to every future summit.

In these roles, it’s easy to get discouraged. Reich recalls a stretch, a year into his tenure, when he was in a “foul mood” because it was so hard to get any traction for his spending plans. He groused, “Deficit reduction is the only game in town.” (If only!) Eventually, his chief of staff let him have it:

You’re the captain. People watch you for subtle cues about whether our team is winning or losing, and whether they’re doing what you want them to. Every one of the assistant secretaries and their deputies, along with hundreds of senior staff around here, see that hangdog look in your eyes, the way your shoulders droop . . . What did you think government would be like, anyway? Did you suppose you could snap your fingers . . . and America would change? That’s just arrogance, Mr. Secretary. Pure arrogance.

Becoming a “public servant” doesn’t mean one’s been given a license to radically remake the country. The license to act boldly needs to be earned; it requires credibility and broad support. I’m struck at how many government appointees (who haven’t been elected to anything, mind you) don’t get this. When I recall some of education’s crash-and-burn moments of the past decade, from the Common Core to teacher evaluation to student loan “forgiveness,” it’s clear that too many federal and state officials mistook a job title for a magic wand. I suspect that this kind of haughty, “shut-up-and-follow” tack has undercut responsible education governance and fueled the rise of today’s “sugar-frosted” education politics.

In my favorite passage from his book, Reich reflects on the difference between policy advocacy and policymaking—between pipe dreams and real-world politics. He writes:

I recall my classes at Harvard. Some of my students used to regard policy-making as a matter of finding the “right” answer to a public problem. Politics was a set of obstacles which had to be circumvented so the “right” answer could be implemented. Policy was clean—it could be done on a computer. Politics was dirty—unpredictable, passionate, sometimes mean-spirited or corrupt. Policy was good; politics, a necessary evil.

I’d spend entire courses trying to disabuse them. I’d ask them how they knew they had the “right” answer. They’d dazzle me with techniques—cost-benefit analyses, probability and statistics, regression analysis. Their math was flawless. But—I’d ask again—how did they know they had the right answer?

They never did. At most, policy wonks can help the public deliberate the likely consequences of various choices. But they can’t presume to make the choices. Democracy is disorderly and sometimes dismaying, but it is the only source of wisdom on this score.

Whatever polls show in the moment, Reich muses, the public often “doesn’t know what it wants until it has an opportunity to debate and consider.” And the public is often prone to changing its mind. (That’s how K–12 accountability could poll at 90 percent in the run-up to 2001’s No Child Left Behind, then bleed support once people saw it in practice.) The job of public officials isn’t simply to do big things—it’s to educate and persuade, to listen and course-correct.

If you’re not up for the requisite frustration and perspiration, you’re not up for the job.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”