Editor’s note: John Weingart is retiring from the Eagleton Institute of Politics after serving as its associate director since 2000. This is an edited version of the keynote remarks he delivered at the institute’s graduation ceremony on May 11. 

As you complete the Eagleton Fellowship Program, you will emerge into a “real world” that is scary, if not terrifying — a world threatened by climate change and COVID-19; poverty and racism; guns and more guns; artificial intelligence; social media; and on and on, all in a context of political dysfunction, despair and division. 

If you are someone inclined toward pessimism and despair, these days provide ample material to pull you further in that direction. 

Yet, as some wise men and women have noted in other disturbing times, despair is a luxury we can’t afford. For one thing, it offers neither a physically nor emotionally healthy way to live. And on a larger level, it helps no one else find paths to more productive and more joy-filled lives.  

Instead, we need to seek signs of hope, sprigs of optimism and deeper caring about others as we struggle to define and identify some successes in building steps to a better world.  

As Eagleton fellows, you are forging 27 unique but overlapping paths in those directions. Not all of you are planning careers in government but I know that most of you emerge from this program with a deeper respect for the people who do that work. In reporting on your placements in government offices and agencies, most of you express surprise that people in the public sector work so hard with such commitment to doing what they believe is the right thing. 

Reflections, pet peeves 

As you know, I am about to retire after 23 years at Eagleton and another 23 years in New Jersey state government. While I don’t know what I am going to do next, I have collected a few conclusions or reflections — or maybe just pet peeves — that I would like to share with you.  

Here are some of my thoughts: 

First, your vote is important not just for president, governor and U.S. senator, but also for more local offices including in New Jersey this year, the entire state Legislature. But, choosing which candidate to vote for should not require meeting all the same criteria employed when awarding a Nobel Prize or deciding whether to grant a five-star rating to a restaurant. We all have the constitutional right and moral obligation to decide which of the candidates on the ballot will best represent our views and interests, but not whether any candidate has lived a sufficiently exemplary life to, in some sense, deserve our vote — which we might withhold if we don’t think a candidate has “earned” it. 

Second, when politicians change their mind, we should not dismiss them as flip-floppers, but rather encourage them to explain the evolution of their thinking. Maybe some of the rest of us will be able to see things in a new light. 

Third, when people look at government and say, “The private sector would do it better,” remind them of the constraints under which government agencies must operate. For one thing, the tasks that we assign to the public sector often are ones in which the private sector has already tried and failed or just never shown up. For another, government must operate with valuable, but challenging, requirements for openness and public involvement in decision-making that are unimaginable in the world of business. 

Fourth, recognize that the process for successfully advocating for new or expanded public programs tends to require a complex dance of underestimating the start-up costs and the number of months or years required for completion, while overestimating the certainty or specificity of the desired benefits. While the emergence of this dynamic is, in some sense, understandable as any desired public expense must compete with so many other needs and priorities, it also exacerbates public distrust as the initial claims of costs and benefits rarely are achieved. 

Word to be wary of 

And fifth, some words of caution about a few words: 

They: Remind people who think there may be an all-powerful “they” out there who could remedy societal ills if only they wanted to, that such a force might be nice but doesn’t exist; 

Demand: Use the word “demand” sparingly. It’s a fighting word that implies there is no space for compromise; 

Promises: Politicians, as a group, are often derided for breaking their promises or making promises they can’t keep. My observation is that they rarely actually use the word “promise” but if they do, they should stop. What they mean and what they should say is, “I’ll do my best to…” 

And, finally, politics. What do we mean when we say something is political? One way to define it is the process by which groups of people make decisions. If you’re ordering a pizza with friends who have different preferences, as soon as you start thinking that this friend had a hard day so we ought to get the pepperoni she likes but that another friend is trying to be a vegetarian so maybe mushrooms are the way to go, then you are entering into a mini political process. 

But the types of decisions we usually mean when calling them political take place in more public venues and with higher stakes. 

Politics in those settings includes identifying the set of tools you will need if you want to promote societal change at any level, and learning to use them effectively.  

Don’t settle 

I began this evening by saying that Donald Trump did not invent political division, but I must note that there is one way in which the nation does now seem united, and that is, unfortunately, that no one feels good about our current direction and future prospects. 

As you move ahead with the next chapters in your lives, you have your work cut out for you.  

I understand that the regulations governing graduation speeches contain a requirement that a speaker offer some unsolicited advice.  

So, in that vein, I hope you won’t settle for work. 

Find work that is meaningful and is something you enjoy — at least most of the time. I hope that you will have the type of family you want, and I encourage you to try to collect old friends — friends who knew you when you were in grad school for example, friends who maybe can help you understand and perhaps even laugh about how your life unfolds in the future. 

Don’t be surprised 

And, finally, don’t be too surprised if life surprises you.  

For most of my years at Eagleton, I taught the closing course in the Undergraduate Associates Program. The students were all in their final semester and often seemed visibly anxious about their futures.  

So, one year I took it on myself to try to calm their fears, and to use myself as an example of how life is not predictable nor fully within our control. 

I told the class that when I finished college, I had no plans, and decided I would try to work in a political campaign.  

I wrote letters to several campaigns I had heard about in one way or another. One was for a man named Joe Duffey who was running for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut. I had first heard of him from a hitchhiker I had picked up on my way back to college more than a year earlier. 

So, in May of 1970 when I was seeking a campaign that might have me, Joe Duffey was one of the candidates to whom I wrote, and his campaign was the first to respond. I drove to Hartford for an interview with the campaign manager who hired me to start the next week. 

Months later, I went to a reunion of campaign supporters. When one of the former staffers asked me what I was going to do next, I said, “I don’t know, maybe go to law school.” 

He said, ”Don’t do that, go to public policy school instead.”  

Two years later, after getting a master’s degree from the Woodrow Wilson School, I started looking for a job in state government in Albany or Trenton. 

I learned that a professor whose course I had almost taken had left the Wilson School and was now working in the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. He was looking to fill a vacancy for a job that interested me. I applied and eventually was hired.  

I stayed in New Jersey. I married my wife, we had a daughter and we bought the house we still live in. 

I continued working in New Jersey state government for 23 years. One evening, I went to a concert and ran into two people I knew from the DEP. They told me about an open position they thought might be interesting to me at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers. 

And 23 years later I’m still here. 

As I wrapped up this summary of my life story, I told the seniors in my class that I apologized if it had been too long or boring, but that the lesson I hoped it offered is that, while it is important to plan for your future, it’s also worth remembering that serendipity or luck or coincidence can often play a significant, unexpected role in your journey.  

As I finished, I looked out at the class and found them all silently staring back at me, until one of them said, “You picked up a hitchhiker?”