Interview With The Commissioner

The Washington Post is running an interview with Michael Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. Here are a couple of excerpts:

I'm a big believer in trying to speak in my own voice. Maybe it's a little colorful, but at the end of the day employees will know that I'm really trying to talk to them. I can be in Miami or Tucson and employees will come up to me and say one of the things that I appreciate about your broadcast is that I know that you actually wrote the material - it sounds like you. ...

I think one of things that you would get unanimity from my executives is I run what lawyers call "hot bench." I read the materials in advance, and I don't bother with things that I see being done right. Instead, I try to get to the heart of what the hard issues are and to make sure that they're on track.