Michael Astrue is a rare breed: a bureaucrat-poet. By day he heads the Social Security Administration, reporting directly to the president, overseeing 65,000 employees and trying to improve a system many say won’t be able to fund the retirements of future generations without extensive congressional reform. By night he pens words in rhyme and meter, publishing the award-winning “The Secret Language of Women” as well as translations of Horace and Petrarch. He spoke to The Washington Examiner about his two worlds, and how his faith moves him in both of them. Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I’m Roman Catholic. And I guess one of the things about being Roman Catholic is just the sense of tradition. I think generally any institution is going to have its shortcomings, but this sense that it really originated from Jesus and the Apostles and it continued for 2,000 years — that’s a very striking thing to be associated with.
Is there one person that most influenced your faith?
This is sort of a hard thing. I was about 10 when Vatican II came in, and everything changed very dramatically. I had a priest growing up who was very influential in guiding me and some of my friends through all that. So it was very hard many years later to discover he was one of the worst abusers in the scandals in Boston, and not just sexually, but the single most violent. The church’s struggle in Boston has been something that I’ve taken very personally.
And that hasn’t turned you away from the faith?
No, it’s made me more skeptical of spiritual pronouncements, because I think you have to distinguish between the core of the faith and the bureaucratic manifestation of the time. So I still hold on to the church and the faith while being very upset about some of the current administrative manifestations.
What kind of influence does your faith have on your poetry? Some of your poems are religiously linked, such as “Cancer Prayer.”
I’ve got a few that I haven’t published, but I’ve just never been fully satisfied with them. I think it’s just very hard. I think in some ways you’re trying to express the inexpressible, so they would be a disappointment. But I think that the instinct toward poetry is very similar to the instinct toward prayer. I think it’s a very similar emotional state.
The magazine First Things published a profile of you in which the author, Paul Mariani, described you as “kenotically selfless.” What did you think when you read that?
That was very flattering. I had to stop and think about what that actually meant. I think what that meant is that in both of the worlds that I function, hubris is pretty common. And I think what he was saying was, from what he could tell from looking at the public record and the literary record, that didn’t same to be the case.
How does your faith influence you as a civil servant?
The biggest thing is it helps persuade you to give up other things in life to do public service. I could make a lot more money. I could lead a more comfortable life. I could live without frequent personal abuse from famous people. But I’m here anyway, and that’s because I think it’s important to try and make the world better. And I think for me that’s a religious impulse.
Do you think your faith improves your leadership?
Yes. Again, if you’re motivated by trying to make the world a better place, you’re probably more balanced, you treat people better, you try to help them be leaders too and bring out the most in them. I think if you’re in government for other reasons you might not behave the same way. And I think a lot of people don’t behave that way. For me it’s not about the money and it’s not about power. It really is for me primarily about the satisfaction of knowing that if I go in and do my job well, life will be better for a lot of people.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I guess for me it’s the recognition that you never know how long your time on Earth is going to be. And that it’s a remarkable opportunity that you need to take advantage of as best you can.
– Liz Essley
