The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (72 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Page 230
On the other hand, her colleague, Jerry Shaw, SEA's lobbyist and counsel who represents careerists against administrative charges, said, "Any kind of adverse action against an employee results in a call to the IG of allegations against the supervisor, 100 percent of the time." The prospect of a long, drawn-out IG investigation is probably enough to deter all but the most serious of intentions on the part of most PASs.
Even the unhappy PASs, however, rated their career people highly. While, as one would expect, the PASs who were interviewed reflected the survey consensus, they placed greater emphasis on support for careerists in the SES. In fact, their praise of the CSESs was nearly unanimous, due, in some cases, perhaps, to low expectations. One PAS commented that he was "startled at the dedication of most of the federal workforce. They are unbelievably smart people." Another compared their intelligence to university faculty and said, "The CSESs won, no contest."
The praise for the CSESs was not unalloyed, of course. One not-so-happy reviewer said the careerists' attitude was,
"I've seen five of you come and go and I'll still be here after you've gone." At the beginning of the term they have an incentive to work with you and you can accomplish some things. Toward the end you're more a lame duck and they engage more in foot dragging while they wait you out. They're also getting a little braver the stronger Clinton looks. . . . The system stinks-it has created its own good old boy network that makes faculty tenure look poor.
Another PAS had a mixed message. He called himself a big fan of the careerists and felt that George Bush, "the quintessential bureaucrat," had been a good president for the career civil service. But he noted that there were always tensions of some sort between the politicians and the careerists "because the institutional culture is to outwait. It's frustrating because institutional inertia makes it difficult to turn the ship." He felt that the government did not pay high enough salaries to attract good support staff, nor was he overly taken with long-term government lawyers who, he said, "tend to opt for lifestyle9 to 5, no weekend work. Private law firm culture is more aggressive. For newcomers to government from private practice it's a step down in regards to workload, but they're still operating a step up from the ones who are already there.''
The mission of an agency has a lot to do with the type of professional workforce an agency attracts. Some agencies' professionals spend their whole career doing the same small task or type of investigation over and over again. If there is a limited market for that specialty in the private sec-
 
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tor they have few options and so stay in government, even though they are burned out by the work. An agency like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), however, can draw people who have skills that are needed in both private and public sectors, so "there is an active flow of people in and out of the agency and to and from the private sector," according to Linda Fisher, assistant administrator for pesticides and toxic substances.
Also, some agencies, such as EPA, have a mission that calls forth personal as well as professional commitment, and so attracts "an outstanding, impressive, very well-educated, highly motivated workforce," according to Fisher. She observed that when she had meetings with other agencies she came away far more impressed with the EPA people than with those at the other agencies. Likewise, banking regulatory agencies tend to attract better people than do the other regulatory agencies because securities lawyers have good job opportunities elsewhere, so turnover there is related to a better job elsewhere rather than to burnout, according to Susan Phillips, a governor at the Federal Reserve Board.
The ambient politics also affect the health and well-being of the career workforce. Donald Laidlaw, the assistant secretary for Human Resources at the Department of Education, saw "the yin/yang of politics" in the existence of his agency: "Ronald Reagan swore to kill this creation of Jimmy Carter but could not. George Bush, calling himself the 'education president,' resuscitated it. That kind of uncertainty takes its toll on career morale."
Interviewees were asked if they had any sense that the careerists harbored political opinions contrary to their own, and if so, if they sensed any difficulty there. Most said that they did not have a clue about their subordinates' politics and had no sense that it affected their work in any way. HUD's Keating, for example, was pleasantly surprised at the high quality of the workforce he found at his agency, given HUD's reputation (another example of low expectations being overtaken by experience). He noted that
Kemp and company are not in sync with the majority of careerists but they've all gotten along well and the careerists respect Kemp's leadership. The agency has a Democratic culture of liberal Democrats but there is great agency solidarity among the political and career people due to Kemp's leadership. The careerists are more globalist than the administration but there's a good symbiosis there.
Frank Hodsoll, deputy director for management at the Office for Management and Budget, said he had no sense that politics affected the work
 
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of his careerists in that most political of places. He trusted their neutral competence and saw no difference between the career and the political people. "You need to develop a team that can produce the result. [The careerists'] job is to present options doable at the moment. They generally genuinely support whoever is in officemost senior careerists date back to Carter, some beyond. OMB is a very heady, elite place to be for careeristsit generally has the highest quality career staff in government."
That heady atmosphere carries its own problem, however, in that its workforce is removed from what Hodsoll called "the retail level."
OMB advises the president, brokers budgets, and works the legislative process, but doesn't really do anything [i.e., produce a program or product]. You're the advisor to the public but you never get your hands dirty; you don't understand what it's like to run a program. Some [OMB careerists] have been there too long. The staff would be better off to go out to an agency or the private sector for a while to regain perspective. The game of brokering a budget (and it is a game) can become alienated from the real work of running an agency. This encourages agencies to look to their Hill committees for support (the iron triangle setup) and undercuts the White House.
Another mixed message came from a PAS who spoke of her support for careerists and "empowering them to do policy making." But she was clearly resentful of the power they wielded to block her moves:
At my agency the careerists in the legal office and administrative office seek to curtail PASs. A lot of power is vested in entrenched career people. Treasury, State, OMB, and Commerce are heavily controlled by careerists, the entrenched bureaucracy. This acts positively as a brake, negatively to keep the status quo perpetuated. They can block needed change. Careerists will be careful of what kinds of issues they bring to PAS's attention for fear they'll muck it up, especially when the PAS is new.
Another PAS noted how the transient nature of political appointees in the federal government carried with it its own cost.
Careerists [ostensibly] respect PASs' ability to talk to other appointees to make decisions, but deep down it's not really true, the appointees are more tolerated. . . . Careerists might be waiting. They expect changea new appointee will come along and march them off in a different direc-

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