The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (38 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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litical people don't know a hill of beans about their area. Those who are confirmed by the Senate are generally good, but at the lower levels, they don't have a lot of background, and have to rely on the career people"' (ibid., 121).
Tom McFee, longtime career executive, joins the debate: "Numbers, alone . . . are not the most critical issue . . .. but, rather,
the types of positions
that are filled by political appointments." Although PAS positions increased significantly (they more than quadrupled from 1965, when there were 152, to 1992, when there were 639), he feels that this increase was mostly justified as it kept pace with the growing size and complexity of government and was part of an overall management plan.
The types of PAS positions which have experienced the most growth are those of the assistant secretary or agency head or their deputy level, or, in some cases, major program directors. . . . these positions require an act of Congress to be established [and] are normally scrutinized as part of the legislative committee process. [They] are only established after Congress and the administration agree that their mutual interest in the incumbents of these positions justifies their establishment. (McFee 1991)
However, beyond the increase in numbers, per se, is the related issue of loss of career positions through a process by which they are converted into noncareer positions. For example, the position of assistant secretary for administration or management (ASAM), was originally established as a career position in line with recommendations of the First and Second Hoover Commissions (1949 and 1955). Over time, however, these positions have been converted to PAS positions to meet demands for political responsiveness. Part of the problem was the manner in which the conversions were handled: there was no coherent congressional or executive plan to provide order and rationale for such a realignment.
Another problem is the premature "topping out" of civil service careers as the positions at the top of its career ladder disappear into the political ranks. In late 1992 only three of these ASAM positions remained filled by careerists, McFee being one. He agrees with the Volcker Commission recommendation that these positions should be returned to career status and suggests that they be established under the direction of a new political position of undersecretary for management (ibid.).
The SES General category allows positions to be filled by either career or noncareer persons and creates "a hodgepodge of reporting relationships wherein noncareer appointees can report to career managers and executives, etc. This wreaks havoc in our performance management processes
 
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and in the bonus system, as well, producing much confusion in the day-to-day chain of command'' (ibid.).
To address these problems, McFee suggests the elimination of the SES General category and that the system return to the original supergrades that were career unless an exception was made. He also recommends that the 10 percent cap governmentwide be made to apply to each agency (currently individual agencies can have up to 25 percent noncareer SES positions, as long as the overall 10 percent cap is maintained). He speculates that this would result in career appointments being safeguarded from inappropriate political encroachment (ibid.).
There are few voices calling for more political appointees. One belongs to Republican Edward Lynch. In contrast to McFee, Richardson, Pfiffner, Light, and others, Lynch (having served as a Republican political appointee with seven federal agencies) argues that reducing the number of political appointees is not the answer; doubling them is. He appears to see the principal enemy as the Congress, rather than the careerists in the executive agencies. Apparently disdaining the Constitution's balance of power, his winner-take-all philosophy is seemingly offended that the Congress might think to thwart the president's intentions: "Responsive government requires a close link between the political ideas that win elections and the policies of government. . . . The executive branch cannot reflect the consent of the governed when the legislature constrains its ability to provide the leadership that is the rightful consequence of winning elections" (Lynch 1991, 55).
While Lynch would rather see exact parity between political and congressional staffs, "giving the executive one person to respond to each staffer who can ask questions of a political nature," he acknowledges the larger financial realities and would settle for twice as many appointees as currently exist, thus "assuring the President one appointee for each five staffers available to Congress" (ibid., 55).
Pfiffner offers three reasons to reverse the trend toward more political appointees to improve government's functioning "without sacrificing political accountability or responsiveness." First, in order for the bureaucracy to respond to the policy changes of a dynamic democracy, its permanent leadership must be up to speed, have a larger vision of government, and be comfortable working at its upper reaches. Bureaucracy cannot serve democracy if it is completely decapitated with each change of administration.
Second, excess appointments work against the policy interests of the president. The more layers of appointees there are between the bureau chief and the bureaucrats who actually implement her or his policy, the
 
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longer it takes to establish control. Presidents thus lose valuable honeymoon and "election mandate" time while appointees secure staff and try to establish control. And finally, the White House personnel office cannot keep pace with the current staffing needs (Pfiffner 1987c, 63), as vacancies of 15 to 20 percent testify.
Conclusion
It is clear that political appointments can be a mine field for unwary presidents. While they present an opportunity to put their stamp on the office, they also present a danger, as the assassination in 1881 of President James Garfield by a "disappointed office seeker" attests. Though not usually in such dramatic fashion, appointees can put their own stamp on a presidency (or president), as many a president has discovered to his dismay.
While presidents in the modern era have taken various approaches from indifference to active direction, no president can give personnel his or her full attention for long, and all have found it to be a headache. It is clear that the president must depend on her or his people to manage the government. But as the number of appointees has grown and the brokering power of the political parties has diminished, pressure has increased on the president from various quarters and special interest groups for their interests to be represented. Early planning and giving high priority to filling vacancies and high visibility to the Presidential Personnel Office are crucial to personnel success. Mutual accommodation from the cabinet on down would ease working relations in the agencies while maintaining the White House tie. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the number of political appointees should be reduced. While reducing the number of appointees would decrease the political capital of the spoils system, it would sharpen the process considerably, give the president more control over it, and reduce the workload on his already overburdened personnel office. It would have the added advantage of returning more power to the careerists, the people who "know how to put their hands on the right switches."
The gridlock with the Senate causes unnecessary delay and grief all around. Both sides should cooperate to ease the confirmation process, particularly the paperwork part of it. Certainly, the personal investigation process should be tightened and confidentiality guaranteed to prospective appointees.
 
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5
PAS Quality and Qualifications: Anything More than a Roll of the Dice?
In innumerable ways, presidents live and die by their political appointments. Yet, how are they to determine before they actually make the appointment which appointee will enhance their political life and which will destroy their political capital? What qualifies a person to be a presidential appointee, per se? Qualifications for PASs are difficult to establish in advance because there is no single standard for competence, evaluation is necessarily (though not totally) subjective, and qualifications can be personal, professional, and political. Neither are the criteria consistent for finding "the best person" for any given position. Further, any one PAS, much like the president himself or herself, has to please a number of disparate elements in both the government and in society. What one group may consider a positive attribute or policy, such as willingness to implement budget cutbacks, another, such as a group affected by the cutbacks, may consider a negative.
The president may be seeking to please or at least not offend a particular group, may need age, gender, racial, or geographic representation, may owe favors to various individuals or groups, or may need to secure future political capital by creating obligation (Mackenzie 1981, 240).
Some positions require technical expertise that cannot be circumvented, some require other skills such as lobbying or networking with congressional leaders. An additional factor is that the definition process of coming to the "best person" is often a collegial one, with all the subjectivity and special interests that those in the process may bring.
Even when all those issues are addressed, there is still the problem of
 
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finding persons who meet the "'softer' criteria for a job, people with political sensitivity, thick skins, good interpersonal skills, and loyalty to the aims of an administration," criteria that cannot always be known in advance. Another problem is that the White House alone cannot know the skills and characteristics of a large number of people. It must rely on third parties to render judgment, which limits the search. "In relying on third parties, [the] search for the 'best person' for the job becomes in reality a search for the 'best person' known to [the] network of contacts" (Mackenzie 1981, 240).
The element of guesswork in the search process is complicated by the fact that there are "few known test tracks [for] high-level government service. No job outside of government requires quite the same combination of talents and attitudes that many government positions require." Presidential personnel officers are left with making what are hoped to be educated and informed choices in an atmosphere of uncertainty. Or, to put it simply, as one former Bush PAS said of the chances of matching jobs and qualifications, "It's a crapshoot."
Where, professionally, do PASs come from and what is their level of preparedness for running the government? The 1985 NAPA survey of PASs serving between 1964 and 1984 indicated that
Many of them come from other positions with the federal government. Forty percent of political appointees are transferred or promoted from other positions with the federal government. We can assume that these people are reasonably prepared for the context, if not the scope of their new jobs. But 60 percent come from other occupations: 24 percent from business, 16 percent from the academic and research communities, 12 percent from the legal profession, and 7 percent from state and local governments. Their level of education is relatively high, with 19 percent holding bachelor's degrees, 21 percent master's degrees, 17 percent PhDs, and 34 percent law degrees. (Pfiffner 1987b, 142)
1
Complicating the picture is the fact that appointees who come from outside the public sector are used to playing by a different set of rules. The ethics and norms of government can seem very foreign to one coming from the private sector. "There are unwritten rules of the political arena, in which quid pro quo is the norm, and the negotiating of compromises is basic to survival" (Bonafede 1987a, 123). Appointees who fail to learn or heed these rules may find their worst nightmare come true-complete agency breakdown and their transgression front-page news in the
Washington Post.

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