I don't disagree, but working as a bureaucrat is not the same as having a political debate. Most bureaucrats are doing work that needs done regardless of political alignment (of the employee, or of the current administration). Leading the police department, sanitation department, etc - none are strictly political positions.
I disagree, since making things more effective often makes things very political. I just want to mention that in many cases, the law requires time-intensive tendering procedures, which are clearly not very efficient or effective.
There do exist some exceptions, but then you need a decision by the respective political commitee to allow such an exception. Here things get very ... political.
This holds for many other points, too: The existing laws do not allow one to work efficiently and effectively. This is only possible if you are good at playing the political game.
At a minimum working in government for a short while allows you to understand the challenges present in that political game if you must play it - this makes you a more astute user of services and a better citizen because you know where real root cause problems lie.
Sure. I don't disagree, but that exists, to some extent, in private sector offices as well.
To be more specific, "office politics" is not the same thing as "Politics" (as in GOP vs Democrat, liberal vs conservative, etc). Your initial post mentioned the decline of political discourse. In my view, that's a different thing than office politics.
