“I played good and I don’t have nothing to learn staying here,” is an approximate quote by a University of Minnesota football player after a recent bowl game explaining his decision to forsake another year of NCAA football and enter the pro ranks early.

Citizens could say the same thing about government and taxes.  ”I pay taxes and I don’t have nothing to learn about how the government spends them.”

Silly, eh?

Such a pitiful grammatical utterance by a collegian attracts obvious note, even if he is a football player.  Many folks have accepted that some “student athletes” play sports more in the hopes of playing professionally than they do in seeking employment at NASA.

So what does this have to do with Understanding Government?  Plenty.  Will we cease our interest in how our government/democracy functions after we finish our yearly income tax return?  Sure, filing and paying taxes honors a civic duty essential to sound societal functioning.  It is a necessary condition for the health of our democracy.  But is it a sufficient one?   Is paying taxes alone enough to be fully engaged in and knowledgeable about our government?

For that football player, he believes, perhaps correctly, that his skills are sufficient to advance to the next level.  Do citizens believe similarly?  Do they imagine themselves ready to progress to another, higher tax bracket and become even more accomplished taxpayers supporting democracy?

Such questions remind me of the joke where one person asks another:  “Do you think ignorance and apathy are at the heart of the problem?”  The other answers:  “I don’t know and don’t care.”

Citizens should recognize that we don’t know as much as we think we do about our government, especially the internal machinations within the Executive Branch, that portion of our government where the rubber hits the road and things get done – well, or not; wisely, or not; cost effectively, or not.    

By now I’d expect many readers are breaking into slow, wide, and long yawns.  How stimulating can anyone expect this stuff to be to Joe or Jane citizen?  If things work well, who cares?  That’s what’s supposed to happen?

But if a federal official really messes up, gets indicted, and provides our 24/7 cable networks with endless prep walk footage, is that what must transpire to captivate our interest and attention?

This a wide gulf between perfection and perfidy.  Much happens within it — stuff that people should know more about so they can appreciate the challenges of governing.  Black and white works well on TV or in the movies; it doesn’t usually exist in the offices and conference rooms of our federal bureaucracies.  There’s a lot of gray floating around that executives and workers must analyze and grapple with daily.  Many times they make the right call.  Sometimes they don’t.  Shouldn’t we better understand the good and the bad?

It’s my fervent hope that this Understanding Government web site becomes the place where journalists and citizens gather to gain a stronger appreciation of the Executive Branch.

Unlike that football player who appears confident that his academic and football education have reached an end, I hope we desire a neverending thirst for what’s happening on the third floor at the IRS building, or the E Ring of the Pentagon, or the State Department’s 7th floor.

Once we do, we’ll be able to move up to the next level, just as that football player hopes to.

Fred Apelquist, contributing editor

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