Editor's Notebook

ometimes I muse, in my self-anointed role as Boswell to the Bureaucracy, that life just in government just ain't much fun anymore. But then something happens to lift my spirits. Such an event took place in February-a retirement party at the National Press Club in Washington for Stanley E. Morris. As I stood in the crowd and listened to Stan's colleagues recount his exploits, my faith in the value of public service and my long-held belief that many government jobs are more interesting than those in the private sector were refreshed.

I got to know Stan in the 1970s, when he and his able sidekick Diane Steed were waging a quiet guerilla war against excessive regulation. From an aerie atop the New Executive Office Building, they peered down on the regulators through their Office of Management and Budget binoculars, conspiring to set speed limits and issue speeding tickets to those who were going too fast. That there was not, at the time, much of a regulatory oversight function in OMB or the White House didn't set Stan back for long. As Diane recalled, he simply wrote down some reform ideas on letterhead he printed for a nonexistent government group, the "Domestic Council Review Group for Regulatory Reform," and forwarded them to his bosses at OMB, who then sent them back down the chain of command for Stan's comment. So was born a regulatory reform drive that can count among its successes important aspects of transportation deregulation, some led by Diane when she served as head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

That wonderful vignette testifies to Stan's ability to maneuver in Washington's complex world. He went on to high positions in law enforcement at the Justice and Treasury Departments and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In the 1980s, he headed and engineered the renaissance of the U.S. Marshals Service with an energy recalled by his colleague Duke Smith: "On the Hill, at Justice, at OMB, Stan lobbies for his service. . . . He is like an octopus with a sword in every hand."

Stan spent his last five years as director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. From a nondescript office building in the Virginia suburbs equipped with banks of high-speed computers, he mounted a sophisticated assault on money-laundering that earned the respect of law enforcement leaders worldwide. His colleagues in the Financial Action Task Force, a 26-nation group, gave him a standing ovation during a meeting in Paris in January for his contributions in the field. The frequency of his trips to Paris earned Stan a little wry commentary in the newspapers last year, but I say more power to him. He has always done his government jobs with panache, et pourquoi pas en Paris?

At his retirement ceremony Stan marveled that he had "actually been paid for the opportunity" to work with such interesting issues and people over his career in public service. American taxpayers should marvel that they are able to employ such able people at such modest rates of pay to do such important work.

And speaking of interesting people, readers will note this month the advent of a new feature, called "Thinking Ahead," presenting the ideas of leading federal officials and thinkers about issues of the day.