Th e literature on the implications of electoral " bureaucracy bashing " for public management is thin. Th is is partly because of the diffi culty of defi ning basic terms and measuring results in meaningful ways. Using focus group data, this article explores how senior federal managers perceive campaign bureaucracy bashing and assess its consequences. Th e participants perceive that candidate-based bashing aff ects federal management on two levels: one emotional, the other programmatic. Th e emotional impact is pronounced, producing frustration and hostility from senior managers toward political candidates, political appointees, and the media. Senior managers report that bashing adversely aff ects policy implementation through low morale, poor recruitment, and training and by fostering an environment of distrust toward bureaucracy. Grounded in a diverse literature relating to public administration, the presidency, campaigns and elections, and political communication, this inquiry fi nds that senior managers confi rm many of the speculations these works raise about how bashing aff ects public employees and public policy.

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The expertise of medical and science professionals is needed in public policy debates in the U.S. and around the world. As societies mature, questions in public policy become increasingly complex and should be informed by science. However, too often public agendas are advanced without the benefit of science and those trained in how to interpret it. Similarly, those trained in the sciences often do not have requisite knowledge, training or an interest in politics and policymaking. Yet, it is clear that optimal policy results in those cases when scientists and policy elites work together in meaningful partnerships. Because the worlds of science and politics—their cultures, assumptions, and methods—are largely separate and different, cooperation between these two cultures is difficult. The authors of this paper hope that their work interpreting one major issue of scientific importance as it has wound its way through public policy processes will be instructive to those in science who are enlisted to bring scientific discovery to public policy making (Fritschler and Rudder 2007). The 60‐year political struggle to move the issue of tobacco control from the agenda of a small group of medical researchers to the public agenda offers insights about public policymaking that are transferable to other issues which rest on science.

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