The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (7 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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bureaucracy itself, the dynamism of the political system, and the other major player in that system, the Congress. Congress initially delegates many of the tools to the president through confirmation of appointees, enactment of enabling legislation, and appropriation of operating budget, and so shares authority over their use. Other key players in this policy drama are the courts, the cabinet, the PASs, the career bureaucrats, the media, the general public, and interest groups (ibid.).
Because presidents' power is so widely shared, confrontation is a tactic best used sparingly; theirs is the power to persuade more than to command. Presidents must adopt a political approach, even within their own bureaucracy. They "must bargain and compromise. . . . This is so because presidents share authority with their subordinates within the Executive Branch; they do not control them. The best way is to work with the bureaucracy and not against it" (ibid., 169-70).
Presidents can strengthen their hand through clarity of presidential intent and the appointment of competent loyalists, clear transmittal of presidential orders to the agencies, and personal presidential interest and involvement in key issues and areas. Other means are lines of authority that give subordinates the power to accomplish presidential policy desires, respect for the power of other policy actors in the field, and care not to overstep presidential bounds (ibid., 190-92).
Any of these tactics, no matter how ably applied, can backfire unexpectedly in what Pfiffner calls the "central paradoxes" of the managerial or administrative presidency. For example, while one administrative strategy is to flood the bureaucracy with loyal supporters, that strategy can have unintended consequences and dangers; the greatest threats to the reputations and political interests of recent presidents have come from "over-enthusiastic loyalists [seeking to do their boss's will regardless of the consequences] rather than from political 'enemies"' (Pfiffner 1991, 4).
The Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal is a case in point. As this convoluted tale slowly unwound, White House aides Oliver North, John Poindexter, and Robert McFarlane claimed to have acted independently of presidential directive. However, their close association with the president meant that, even though they fell on their swords for their leader, as loyal aides are expected to do, they could in no way shield President Reagan and then-Vice President Bush from at least indirect responsibility for the scandal.
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While the president should designate a chief of staff to handle routine matters, he himself "must be involved sufficiently to ensure that his interests are being well served. The president must probe enough to guard against the overzealous subordinate who is willing to bend the laws or the
 
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Constitution in what is thought to be the president's interest. No one should be allowed to think that the buck stops short of the president" (Pfiffner 1991, 15).
Because government is so large and complex, the best way for a president to "control" the executive branch is to manage it indirectly, to delegate most issues that are not clearly presidential to department and agency heads. Presidents should lean on their cabinet secretaries; direct presidential involvement should be very selective.
Similarly with respect to political personnel: the president should play a positive role in setting the tone for recruiting political appointees, but he should delegate the selection of most subcabinet appointees to department and agency heads. Personal or ideological loyalties to the president do not in themselves guarantee the effective implementation of presidential priorities because, as noted, there are so many other actors and intervening factors (Pfiffner 1991, 4).
Overzealous subordinates in the agencies can work against the president's best interests, as did Elizabeth Tamposi and John Berry when they conducted an inappropriate, if not illegal, search of the passport files of Candidate Clinton and his mother during the presidential campaign of 1992. Though they vowed they were acting independently of White House control, their claims were met with nearly universal skepticism that reflected badly on their boss, President and Candidate George Bush.
However much a president may seek to control the administration, countervailing forces mitigate that control: infighting among White House staffers and their attempts at excessive control, as mentioned above, work against the administrative presidency in the long run. And
even loyal ideologues with presidentially informed policy agendas and a modicum of experience and savvy find their ability to influence the bureaucracy contingent on such key factors as: 1. perceptions of how strongly the president is concerned with their efforts; 2. how well-honed their managerial skills are; 3. how relevant their prior policy experience is to the task at hand; 4. how suitable their personalities are to relevant bureaupolitical environments; 5. whether opportunities to accomplish change emerge; and 6. how predisposed they are to alter core agency activities (processes and bureaucratic routines) rather than discrete tasks. (Durant 1991, 463)
Additionally, recruitment of highly qualified political appointees suffers in the administrative strategy, as does PASs' willingness or ability to carry out the president's agenda. The lower into the bureaucracy political
 
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appointees are placed, the less attractive are those jobs to potential PASs with appropriate experience and qualifications. As a result, these positions tend to be filled by "younger, less experienced, less knowledgeable 'ticketpunching' appointees . . . who embrace or become dependent on entrenched bureaucratic cultures, routines, and dominant coalitions" (ibid.).
With respect to the permanent bureaucracy; the career bureaucracy is often seen by new presidents as an obstacle to the achievement of presidential priorities. FDR, for example, had inherited a civil service, twelve years in the employ of Republican presidents, that was termed by one observer as "merely a mass of Republican political appointees frozen into position by act of Congress" (Hess 1988, 23). This problem transcended party lines. In 1954 Eisenhower issued the Willis Directive, setting the stage for further centralization in Nixon's White House and central clearance in Reagan's. It placed
a special assistant in each department and agency to control vacancies in both the higher competitive [career] and political posts by reporting [vacancies] to the Republican National Committee. . . , [which] was to be given time to recommend candidates with satisfactory political clearances. The secretiveness surrounding the plan and the uncertainty of its application gave the impressionprobably a correct onethat this was a thinly veiled raid on the federal service. (Light 1995, 46)
Presidents continue to be vexed by their assumptions about the careerists who served their predecessors. Nevertheless, cooperation with the career service is essential to accomplishing presidential goals; enlisting the bureaucracy's enthusiastic support can enhance the probability of presidential success (Pfiffner 1991, 4).
As the mixed blessings of an administrative presidency were most definitively exercised and honed by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, their administrations are examined in this chapter in some detail. George Bush's administration receives initial observation here, to be followed by in-depth analysis in later chapters.
Greta Garbo in the White House:
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Richard Nixon's Administrative Presidency
Richard Nixon's administrative strategy involved the exercise of government by executive action, relying heavily on the power vested in the hands of the PASs who headed the executive agencies (Rourke 1991a,
 
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114). He made extensive use of the tools of appointment, budget, and reorganization powers.
Preparing the way for Ronald Reagan, Nixon's administrative strategy also involved claims of executive authority, as in his attempts at budget impoundment to achieve policy goals, and a general "go it alone" attitude vis-à-vis the Congress. So-called executive privilege was used extensively by Nixon to shield his office from congressional inquiry. He set the White House over and against not only the Congress, but also against the rest of the executive branch, making broad use of the president's appointment powers to procure heads of domestic civilian agencies who were opposed to the basic mission and goal of the agencies they administered (ibid., 114-15).
Not unlike President Eisenhower, Richard Nixon came into the White House with the conservative's bias against big government and its bureaucracy, suspicious of a career civil service that had spent the past eight years working at the behest of Democratic social policies (Aberbach 1976, 466-67). According to Nathan,
The plan for an "administrative presidency" helps to explain Nixon's entire domestic policy. The roots of this plan were in the experience of his first term. The president and John D. Ehrlichman, his chief domestic advisor, came to the conclusion sometime in late 1971 or early 1972 that, in most areas of domestic affairs,
operations constitute policy.
Much of the day-to-day management of domestic programsregulation writing, grant approval, personnel development, agency organization and reorganization, program oversight, and budget apportionmentcan involve high-level policymaking. Getting control over these processes was the aim of the President's strategy; and judged against the lack of legislative success on domestic issues in the first term, there are grounds for concluding that this was a rational objective. (Nathan 1975, 70)
While the regulatory agencies and smaller administrative units generally were spared a direct attack, "the (Nixon) administrative presidency focused on the big-spending cabinet agencies, especially Health, Education, and Welfare, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Transportation, and Interior." Thus, Nixon's New Federalism was considered by many to be nothing more than an "elaborate rationale for paring down social spending" (ibid., 26, vii-viii).
"Nixon and his White House loyalists increasingly saw themselves as pursued by three demons: the press, Congress, and the federal bureaucracy." To counter the press, his staff developed innovative techniques for

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