The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (49 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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the new generation of political technocrats will have many negative examples and guidelines, [w]hat it is less likely to have is a usable lore for treating public service as a constructive enterprise. Something as loosely organized as the in-and-outer system is heavily dependent on people knowing what is expected of them, . . . sensing the institutional subtext that should shape personal calculations and appropriate behavior. We can be sure that a governing community in which "anything goes" among the participants will be one in which nothing goes particularly well. (Heclo 1987, 216)
George Bush took a significant step toward restoring respect for the public service. Unfortunately, he was followed by the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, a fundamental element of which was hostility toward Washington. The shutdowns of the federal government in late 1995 and early 1996 during the budget battles served to reinvigorate the Reagan-era animus toward federal workers. Only deeper cuts in the federal government, regardless of merit, will satisfy some critics; attempts to improve that government will carry little interest for those antagonistic to the majority of its manifestations, as many on the New Right (libertarians and the 1994 class of House "freshmen") are.
Nevertheless, presidents have a responsibility to lead. They can do so by appointing competent persons who place public service above self interest, who are well-rounded individuals loyal to their president's policy but not ideologues, and who have a commitment to managing their agencies well.
The administrative presidency in its various incarnations has had ample exposure on the public stage for a quarter of a century. What impact does the exercise of the administrative presidency have on the execution of government? To answer this question chapter 6 analyzes relations between political appointees and senior careerists in the modern era.
 
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6
Political-Career Relations in the Modern Era: "Articulating Society's Dreams and Bringing Them Gingerly to Earth"
High-level political appointees and their career subordinates engage in an elaborate, sometimes subtle bureaucratic dance as they draw boundaries, promote ideologies, and protect turf, ostensibly in the name of good, responsive, and effective government. Since neither side can run the government alone, a partnership built on mutual trust and respect is a crucial element in the dance. Each has a role in the choreography: "Presidential appointees provide the link between the decisions of the electorate in selecting a new president and the permanent bureaucracy. Senior career executives provide the professionalism and continuity required to manage effectively the complex programs of the federal government" (Rosen 1989, 505).
In Heclo's understanding, the traditional neutral competence of the career executives (as opposed to the responsive competence of the political executives)
entails not just following orders but having the practical knowledge of government and the broker's skills of the government marketplace that makes one's advice worthy of attention. Thus, neutral competence is a strange amalgam of loyalty that argues back, partisanship that shifts with the changing partisans, independence that depends on others. (Heclo qtd. in Seidman and Gilmour 1986, 73)
The tension in political-career executive relations has existed since at least the 1930s. Yet, both sides contribute important positive elements to
 
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the bureaucratic mix: the political side with its short-term orientation brings change and new blood, the career, with its long-term orientation, brings continuity and institutional memory. The contributions of each are different but complementary, at least in classic politics-administration dichotomy theory.
Political executives enunciate new directions and goals based on their interpretation of the public's will, while career executives help to translate new or modified policies into practical and effective programs. Bureaucracy needs the intermittent fillip of fresh questioning and outside redirection to counteract tendencies towards stultification and complacency, and political leadership needs the steadying anchor of institutional expertise and insiders' advice to avoid or reduce unnecessary errors and to obtain tactical sophistication. (Lorentzen 1985, 411)
This chapter discusses presidential relations with the bureaucracy, the Senior Executive Service (SES), and the results of bureaucrat bashing. It focuses on the key question of managing career executives and analyzes the different roles assigned politicals and careerists and the resultant tensions between them. It then turns to various models of political-career relations, including a typology of those of George Bush's administration.
The Administrative Presidency and Careerists: The President as Chief Bureaucrat
Presidents in the modern era have had decidedly mixed views of the federal bureaucracy. Relations between JFK and the permanent government, for example, were predominantly neutral in the early days of his administration but deteriorated over time.
Kennedy and his advisors viewed the civil service with a low quotient of paranoia. They did not look upon the bureaucracy as a hotbed of covert political oppositionists. Yet before long they began to think of the rest of government not so much as a political resistance movement but as an
institutional
resistance movement [emphasis added], "a bulwark against change" and "a force against innovation with an inexhaustible capacity to dilute, delay and obstruct presidential purpose". . . . At times the White House staff may have confused the pace of the permanent government with its intent; the bureaucracy moved slowly, but it did not necessarily move in the opposite direction, nor was it totally immune to political leadership. The staff's suspicions of the civil service, however,

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