pstrongIt turns out that you can be honest and modest and succeed in Washington-just don't stay too long.strongppbrppAn apolitical academic, an unknown, is appointed to the White House to advise the administration on STEM education, a topic absent of interest by the president. Until that is, fans begin to accumulate, and momentum builds. A hire of disinterested necessity-merely an act of compliance with Congress-becomes a pivotal character triangulated between a workforce-focused West Wing, federal agencies fiercely guarding their independence, and a national groundswell-indeed an emerging movement-desperate for a North Star. ppbrppThis modern-day Gulliver's Travels in Bureaucracyland begins benignly enough. America's education systems must respond to the needs of industry, and thus the economy, and produce more scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, and related professionals Congress declared in 2010. The White House's science and technology policy office was assigned t