The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (48 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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The task force also recommends that "selected positions in the management, budget, and personnel areas be designated 'career-reserved,"' to encourage retention of competent civil service employees by providing more career mobility (ibid., 8). It recommends upgrading the managerial skills of the political appointees to ease some of the stress of supervision. Friction is inevitable between career and political executives due to the interweaving of policy and administrative roles and the inability of the American system, with its inherent suspicion of strong bureaucracy, to address that friction adequately.
As a nation we have sought to keep our bureaucracy weak and fragmented; we have populated our administrative system with technical specialists, discouraged breadth, emphasized carefully classified and circumscribed jobs, and forsworn any meaningful govcrnmentwide personnel authority. And, as if these steps were somehow insufficient, we have also subjected the bureaucracy to extraordinarily close political control, insisting that as many positions as possible be in the hands of noncareer appointees and that the remainder be brought to heel through elaborate performance appraisal and compensation systems. (Ibid., 80)
While it was the impetus for reform that brought the SES to birth and a vigorous counter-reform movement that has denied it success, there is hope for the SES in further reform, difficult though it will be to institute: "there is no reasonable alternative to resuscitation. If the SES is allowed to slip quietly from the scene, neglected and unused, then the struggle will simply have to begin anew, for the need of the federal government for a competent and professional corps of senior executives is at least as great as the forces opposing it" (ibid., 32). In other words, if the SES did not exist, it would have to be invented.
The Volcker Commission
The nation's executive leadership, composed as it is of political and career employees, has served it well over the course of its existence. However, the Volcker Commission Report of 1989 cites problems in that leadership. The commission notes "evidence on all sides of an erosion of performance and morale across government in America. Too many of our most talented public servantsthose with the skills and dedication that are the hallmark of an effective career serviceare ready to leave" (Rosen 1989, 501).
The commission comments on the instability of the top level of gov-
 
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ernment officials in relation to the career employees. In contrast to the long tenure of careerists, "the average tenure of Senate-confirmed presidential appointees (PAS) is about 2.0 years. The average tenure of noncareer SES members is 18 months, and
every year one third of them change positions or leave the government"
(emphasis added) (Volcker 1989, 215).
With the increase in political appointees and their filtration lower down into the executive ranks of the bureaucracy via Schedule C, there are now more of them at the GS 13-15 levels alone than there were total Schedule C appointees at all levels in 1976. As noted, this displacement means that fewer positions are now available for career employees, thus motivating an exodus out of public service. This has resulted in a brain drain and loss of morale: 52 percent of the career SES employees left government service between 1979 and 1982. Additionally, as observed, changes in presidential administrations mean that the entire top layer of an agency, as it is now often composed solely of political appointees, suddenly disappears, sometimes down to the Schedule C secretaries. In fact, any change of personnel often wipes out the next lower layers. The departing players leave behind no semblance of institutional memory; sometimes even basic knowledge of organizational functioning disappears with them. Continuity is thus lost and start-up time lengthened for the next troupe of political players (ibid., 215-16).
To reverse what the commission calls "the deterioration of the executive infrastructure of the government," it recommends, as have other studies, that the president give strong public as well as private support to the public service and improve the quality of political appointees. It also recommends a reduction of one-third, to two thousand in the combined political ranks of SES, PAS, and Schedule C, stating, as others have, that "excessive numbers of presidential appointees may actually undermine effective presidential control of the executive branch" by impeding communication between political and career executives (ibid., 17). While President Bush agreed with the overall direction of the commission's report, he rejected this counsel.
The commission calls for the movement of career executives into mid- and upper-level executive branch positions. To attract better noncareer executives it recommends improved orientation of newcomers, improved communications between the president and the appointees, a transition plan that begins with the party nominating conventions, and less rigorous financial disclosure requirements.
It is widely agreed that current financial disclosure requirements hinder the search for the best appointees. Waterman, for example, notes the
 
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effect of "the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, which kept many competent individuals from seeking government employment by requiring detailed financial reports and severely restricting post-government service employment options" (Waterman 1989, 31).
While recognizing the need for the president to set the policy agenda, the commission decries the centralization of the modern era and calls for greater decentralization of government management, including delegating to agency and department heads greater administrative discretion in managing their organizations and in hiring and firing decisions. This recommendation has two edges:
Undoubtedly, greater administrative discretion would encourage more creativity and initiative in implementing public policy. At the same time, it would open the door wider for decisions that favor private and partisan interests. This underscores the importance of
matching more delegation with clear standards, effective oversight, and selection and orientation processes for political and career executives who need to be firmly grounded in serving the public interest
[emphasis added]. (Rosen 1989, 502)
Careerists should have greater administrative discretion and not be hamstrung by excessive adherence to predetermined rules. Focusing on results rather than rules as a means of judging bureaucracies would keep administrators and bureaucracies more responsive to public and official expectations
(PAR
1991; Kelman 1982).
Heclo notes that "the present personnel system of political management is itself insufficiently managed." He observes that the short-termer "system, left to its own devices and put on automatic pilot, is a system likely to evolve in directions that confound the functioning of American national government" (Heclo 1987, 213-15).
His recommendations for "nudging the evolving design for political personnel in a more constructive direction" involve balancing the short-term perspective of PASs with "reliable, routinely accepted ways for pitting those fresh ideas against longer-term perspectives, without prejudice or recriminations on either side." He also believes that PAS positions must be taken seriously as "major centers of responsibility [and not be allowed] to proliferate haphazardly." He urges not permitting the enervating "personal dramas" of change-agentry "constantly [to] disrupt no less valuable elements of continuity in government that need to go on across a succession of political burnouts.'' Additionally, he stresses the need to
 
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protect "the virtue of democratic openness which creates 'citizen executives' from reflecting only the preferences held by those who happen to be mobilized to affect the government's work" (ibid., 212-13).
Conclusion
It is widely acknowledged that in significant ways the short-termer system, with its combination of technical competence/neutral responsiveness and political responsiveness, is well suited to the American political context and is here to stay. It allows flexibility and dynamism and provides political cover for presidential moves. However, it should not be allowed to grow untended. Its costs can easily outweigh its benefits when the growth of appointees creates inefficiencies in government, unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, and loss of institutional memory, and when it undercuts careerists' competence, ignores their political acumen, and curtails career mobility. Presidents must learn to resist the attractions of adding partisans to government and to govern with the people who know what they are doing.
The politically charged process of
choosing
the company the president keeps must be given high priority by the White House so that professional qualifications balance with competence the political qualifications of connections and loyalty. Further, as numerous studies recommend, the number of appointees at all levels should be reduced and as many positions as possible returned to the career service. The current system has not only gutted the morale of the careerists and distracted them with endless orientation and training of their new political bosses, it has also created excessive layers of government with too many top politicians too far away from the people who actually do the work.
Politicization of the budget function works against the administrations's credibility and should be cut back considerably, as was the case after failed attempts to politicize the personnel function in the first Reagan administration.
The negative image of government, "its aura of failure," has been fostered by events such as "Viet Nam, the overpromising in Great Society programs, and Watergate" (Heclo 1987, 212-13). Indictments and ethical charges against more than one hundred members of Reagan's administration and the Iran-Contra affair further tarnished Washington's image (Stengel 1987, 18-20). What will restore some of the political leadership's luster? While

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