ecutives, to Congress and congressional staff, and even to the president who appointed them" (Heclo 1977 qtd. in Joyce 1990a, 130). The daily reality of PASs' lives is that, while they all work for the same president, as the chief of a particular bureau or department, they may sometimes find themselves in a difficult position vis-à-vis their PAS colleagues:
|
 | | A major element of the life of political executives is the necessity both to compete and to cooperate publicly with other agencies. The necessity for executive branch teamwork conflicts with the value of departmental pluralism and the need for the executive to advance his agency's program. The effective executive carries water on both shoulders. Often a representative of one agency will be called to testify before a congressional committee on one side of an issue, and his counterpart in another department will present the opposite view. On occasion, divergent economic views will be presented to industry hoards and committees. (Rehfuss 1973, 135)
|
The competition inherent in government bureaucracy is made all the more difficult if these same agency heads are strangers either to one another or to Washington. The reality of government by executives who are strangers to one another is closely related to the difficulties produced by tenures of eighteen monthsPASs are unable to form good working relationships with one another and with their career subordinates, because there simply is not enough time.
|
However, Heclo made his assessment in an era in which the White House had changed parties several times with no president holding onto it for two terms since Eisenhower. In 1992, at the end of twelve years of uninterrupted Republican rule, the situation had changed. And, in fact, the Bush PAS Survey results indicate that many of the PASs knew one another, talked on the phone frequently, and labored together in relative familiarity in interagency working groups.
|
Clearly, the notion of "strangers" was fading from relevance by the early 1990s. As one PAS observed, there was not really any reason for the Bush-Quayle PAS Association to meet other than for the yearly Christmas party because everyone at that level knew everyone already. (The Bush SES Association did hold regular meetings, however.)
|
Nonetheless, in early 1993, with a team of Democrats long exiled from the White House freshly on the scene, new life may have been breathed into the "stranger" ethos. While there appeared to be numerous appointees from the Carter presidency in Bill Clinton's administration, groups long ignored or underrepresented were brought in to the centers of power by Clinton's commitment to gender, racial, and geographic diver-
|
|
