The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (60 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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skills, perspectives, and values each set of managers brings to the organization, and 4. A consistent awareness of, and active concern for, the public interest, broadly defined. For political appointees, this will mean moving beyond election results. (Ibid., 14)
How is this ideal model to be achieved? The Senior Executive Service, at least in theory, was a step in the right direction because it attempted to create a unified executive service in which career managers were given a significant policy voice while simultaneously being subject to political control. However, as noted, the larger political dynamics and the problems inherent in the SES soon doomed this good intention to serious difficulty. The public distrusted any sign of perceived elitism, bonuses and other incentives were cut, the percent of those eligible to receive bonuses was reduced from 50 percent to 20 percent, and personal development plans were drastically scaled down. Ronald Reagan's appointees came into office determined to cut the careerists out of policy discussions and used reassignment and relocation provisions of the system punitively to enforce their will on careerists they considered subversive (Levine 1986, 201-02).
Despite this history, the climate of relations between political and career managers can be improved within the public service model with some determined effort. Presidents and political appointees need first to stop bureaucrat bashing: ''Appointees cannot arrive at their appointed positions proclaiming that all bureaucrats are incompetent and expect to be viewed [by them] as legitimate managers." Also, political appointees must commit to longer tenure in office and be better schooled in management and the legal restraints on their actions. Education of future career managers must include a component of democratic and ethical concerns to match their technical expertise. Additionally, SES members must maintain a pride in their calling and a belief that they are performing a valuable service to the nation (Ingraham and Ban 1988, 17).
The politicscareer tension is probably as old as the bureaucracy. Each side in turn has predominated.
In times of political excess and abuse we turn to the concept of a neutral career service for expertise and balance. In times of frustration with the slowness and isolation of the public bureaucracy, we turn to the dynamic political system for energy and balance. . . . the vitality of the system depends upon the value of both the career civil service and the political management system. (Ibid., 16-17)
 
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While the
public interest
inherent in the public service model is an amorphous concept, the debate itself will continue to be a key ingredient to the model. The debate about its definition is and "always has been at the heart of the public policy process; it is also an essential part of the public management process." It remains to be seen whether a broad public interest can overcome narrow political ideology. It is, however, "a worthy goal to pursue that 'well ordered polity' [in which] . .. 'politicians and bureaucrats can each do what they are best able to do: politicians articulate society's dreams and bureaucrats help bring them gingerly to earth"' (Ingraham and Ban 1986, 159).
Contextual Images of Political-Career Relations
Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman (1981) approach the question of political-career relations from a content-context basis, more than from a rules-and-regulations basis. Growing from their fundamental assumption that both camps are policy makers in one way or another, their "images" of these relationships are intended to illuminate patterns in the data that has been gathered about these players.
The first of their images is the standard politics/administration dichotomy, wherein partisans are to decide policy and bureaucrats are to implement it, cut and dried, no questions asked. Image II moves more into the area of context apart from authority and assumes that both politicians and bureaucrats make policy but with different focuses. The dichotomy here is between facts and interests. The politicians must balance and mediate among diverse and conflicting claims. They ask if a policy will pass political muster with relevant constituencies. Bureaucrats ask the more technical question, will it work? While the politicians pass value judgments, the bureaucrats pass technical judgments.
Image III posits a dichotomy of energy versus equilibrium. It moves even more into the context area, focusing on the world in which each camp lives within the same bureaucracy. The politicians live in a broader world in which they confront the conflicting interests of unorganized individuals. They have an interest in helping to surface the claims of unorganized persons and interests as a means to create greater political capital for themselves: as such, their goal is to bring more people into the process. Bureaucrats, on the other hand, deal with organized groups; their focus is more narrow and limited. While politicians operate on the macro level and seek to reconcile and bridge conflicting interests, bureaucrats operate on the micro level and, lacking the overall picture, are not dis-
 
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posed to integrate diverse claims and interests across boundaries. They have a tendency to fix on what is in their current scope, while politicians' tendency is to look beyond the present reality to the potential.
Temperament plays a significant role in these two camps' tendencies. "Prudence, practicality, moderation, and avoidance of risk are the preferred traits of a civil servant; only a politician could have termed extremism a virtue and moderation a vice," as did Barry Goldwater in his presidential race against Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The Republican presidential contenders in the 1996 election, each seeking to claim the mantle of the most conservative, were only following in Goldwater's footsteps. As the authors note, "The natural habitat of the politician is the public podium, whereas the bureaucrat is found seated at a committee table." Politicians' souls are stirred (and they are more apt to stir the souls of others) by passions and appeals to philosophical principles; bureaucrats are more likely to practice conflict management and to avoid controversy (Aberbach et al. 1981, 12).
Aberbach et al. note a convergence of roles from the second half of the nineteenth century in which Image I's politics/administration dichotomy reigned, to the first half of the twentieth century when Image II's acceptance of a limited policy-making role for bureaucrats was accepted, to the third quarter of that century, which saw an expanded policy-making role for bureaucrats.
This growing overlap of roles culminates in Image IV, the pure hybrid caused by the increasing need for expertise in both camps in the last quarter of this century. This need has significantly erased the dichotomy between politics and administration as the two tasks have become integrated.
This integration can be seen in several places, notably in the White House staff that brings in large numbers of careerists in key policy-making roles, particularly in OMB. The clearest sign of this integration in the larger bureaucracy is the Senior Executive Service. As discussed above, the SES was created in 1978 specifically to be political, to give partisans more control over the bureaucracy. While only 10 percent of its members are political appointees, the other 90 percent are top careerists who have traded civil service job security for increased power, salary, and mobility. The Bush PAS Survey, in which the PASs gave ample evidence of their dependence on their top careerists, demonstrates clearly the validity of this hybrid model in the current era.
One additional location of note for this hybrid is in the congressional staff, particularly those assigned to committees, which have become larger and more specialized to counter the growth of the executive branch's bureaucracy. Congress will continue to demand more staff with
 
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program and policy expertise, particularly in times of divided government.
Competent Comity in the Public Service: George Bush's Model of Political-Career Relations
Given the above description and illuminations of political-career relations, into which does George Bush's style fit? His administration did not match neatly any one of these various models but might best be described as a combination of the comity-realpolitik, competence, public service, and Image IV models. Bush clearly valued the public service and the skills and dedication of its practitioners; he encouraged his appointees to work with, rather than against, their career subordinates. He did not place appointees in agencies to undermine their mission, as had Reagan, and he did not generally engage in subversion of the agencies' work (with the exception of the Competitiveness Council, which could unilaterally reverse agency regulations, thus overturning agency rule-making authority in the interests of free enterprise and unfettered capitalism).
As noted, there are realpolitik givens of the political-career relationship: the transient nature of political appointees, their relative inexperience and naivete vis-à-vis the careerists, the sluggish nature of a civil service system that frustrates efforts to move, demote, or fire employees, and the conflicting pressures on appointees that pull them simultaneously downward into their agency and outward to the White House. These givens lend support to the comity model that suggests a positive working relationship between the two partners in the bureaucratic choreography so they can get on with the dance. The Bush people appeared to recognize the utility of comity in political-career relations.
Bush also stressed competence in his appointees to a greater degree than had his immediate predecessor. He focused on managerial competence, placing great faith in lessons carried over from the private sector and its business practices (such as the Competitiveness Council and "regulatory relief"). The problem with this approach is that it enshrines practices that are not at all foolproof and, more seriously, fails to recognize the inherent differences between the public and private sectors. It also can work against the public interest as it seeks to promote or protect business interests, rendering moot any grand assertion that Bush's was a pure public service model.
The public service model is a positive, forward-looking standard that respects both partners and assumes that each has a legitimate role in the dance and that each is guided by a concern for the public interest. Given Bush's support for the public service, this paradigm was certainly a sig-

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