The search for a public administration reality begins with issues of theory as a substitute for reality. These illusions of theoretical construct have not corrupted public administration, in part because of Minnowbrook I. In a time of national crisis the papers of Minnowbrook I set out an ethic and perspective seriously informed by the reality of the 1968 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) and in 1988, Minnowbrook II is informed by the Commission on the Cities (a twenty year update of the Kerner Commission Report). The Minnowbrook I papers are an example of the whole being more important than the sum of its parts. Both conferences as well as the papers they produced are grounded in reality, in a shared commitment to making democratic self-government work, and in achieving sensible notions of effectiveness, equity, human dignity, and trust free from the corrupting effects of theory. What can we possibly say that would in any pertinent way bridge the gap of time that would persuasively relate 1968 to the present day? The kindest comment would seem to be that, thus far at least, compared to 1968, we enjoy a degree of relative tranquility. Consider for a moment the sequence of spasmodic convulsions which relentlessly shocked virtually all segments of our society in 1968 with such numbing intensity that even the gentle September solitude of the Adirondacks could only soothe but not erase the emotional impulses that were generated by those who attended the 1968 Minnowbrook Conference in upstate New York. To mention just a few of the traumatic events of that fateful year one might begin in February when the Kerner Commission report was released. The tone of the report was as bleak as its temper; America faced a domestic crisis situation of major proportions. In March, the political system was given a severe jolt when Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection as President in the November 1968 general election. This set into motion multiple political machinations within the Democratic party, all of which seemed to blur into a surrealistic nightmare as a result of the assassinations of, first, Martin Luther King in April, and then, Robert F. Kennedy in June. But the real shock waves were yet to come. Hardly thirty days had passed following the assassination of Robert Kennedy when the nation and the world were hit with the debacle of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the release of the Papal encyclical, Humane Vitae. It was within this context that a group of conferees gathered together at Minnowbrook in September to discuss and reflect on, figuratively speaking, what it meant to be a democrat in a global society in which the party of Jefferson, the followers of Marx, and the apostles of Christ all seemed to embrace the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” as a categorical imperative of the first magnitude. Whatever the original intention of those who planned the 1968 Minnowbrook conference, the tone and temper which surfaced at the onset, and never receded, were a seemingly unconscious testimonial to the German sociologist, Robert Michaels. Writing in the last 1920s, Michaels argued that, It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors, of the mandatories over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization says oligarchy.(1) Michaels concluded that all existing organizations, when faced with the demands for bold, aggressive innovations, must respond with defensive, even reactionary decisions to retain their power. “That which is oppresses that which ought to be.” But this time-worn trope is much too simplistic to explain the complex intricacies of the current public policy process and organizational behavior. Certainly no one was more aware of this than the conferees at Minnowbrook in 1968, as well as anyone else who has followed the ebb and flow of our political and policy systems to the present day.