The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (12 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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House staff time to the selection process; and reserving for the White House all final decisions even on subcabinet selections. Also, the Reagan personnel selection process subjected candidates to an unprecedented effort to "align presidential appointment decisions with presidential policy objectives." Appointees were carefully screened for policy and political background, legislative ties, ethics, and general compatibility with the core team-with sign-offs required from key people in each area. (Salamon and Abramson 1984, 46)
Central clearance as a philosophy of management in the Reagan White House meant that control and ideological purity were the dominant themes, particularly for appointments to subcabinet positions. While earlier administrations had reviewed approximately 10 percent of the appointments, Reagan's team oversaw the entire slate of some three thousand positions (Smith 1988, 302). They focused heavily on the second- and third-tier positions, "insist[ing] on the litmus of Reaganite conservative ideology, [and] push[ing] names from Reagan's conservative movement onto cabinet secretaries" for these positions. The resulting long delay in filling positions "left agencies decapitated and thus even more susceptible to White House control" (ibid., 302-03). According to political theorist Paul Light, the White House appointed lower-level appointees who
would cut their [political] boss's throat to please the president, . . . They are an entirely different breed of appointee than in the Carter, Nixon, and Ford administrations. They are ideologically committed. There is no allegiance to the department, but to the Oval Office or the conservative cause. No administration has penetrated so deeply [into the bureaucracy]. (Ibid., 302-03)
Reagan's people were remarkably successful in "purging the federal government of moderate appointees" (Aberbach 1991, 230), recruiting more Republicans and more conservatives to his administration. Some 93 percent of his appointees and 40 percent of his senior careerists were Republicans, in contrast to Nixon's 66 percent and 17 percent, respectively. While 19 percent of Nixon's partisans and 13 percent of his careerists opposed an active role of government in the economy, 72 percent and 47 percent, respectively, of Reagan's harbored the same beliefs. And, building further on Nixon's teachings to strengthen political leverage, Reagan repoliticized the deputy assistant secretary (DAS) layer by converting them back into political appointments (Light 1995, 56-57).
 
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While the traditional approach of new administrations is to claim to seek qualified persons for the top positions, actual practice often produces only lip service to quality. As political pressures are applied, they produce
the need to reward specific constituencies and contributors, the success of some cabinet appointees in negotiating the right to control the appointment of subordinates, and the wish to have appointees who will be dedicated to the president and to his political philosophy. The usual result is cadres of appointees who exhibit divided loyalties and uncertain reliability. Anticipating this result, presidents are reluctant to delegate or decentralize control over policy to political appointees or even to view the use of their appointment power as more than peripheral to the achievement of their policy goals. (Lynn 1985, 339)
The Reagan administration, however, veered from this well-trod path to seek out and use surrogates to drive administration policy goals aggressively in the face of expected opposition from a government assumed to be in enemy hands. Consequently, "the primary qualification for appointmentovershadowing managerial competence and experience or familiarity with issuesappeared to be the extent to which an appointee shared the president's values and would be reliable and persistent both in transfusing these values into agency practices and in executing central directives bound to be unpopular in his or her agency" (ibid., 340). Loyalty to Reagan and his philosophy became the unifying force for his appointees, his front line in attacking the bureaucracy. Beyond merely seeking to tame the bureaucracy, Reagan used his appointees
as agent provocateurs, enforcers, and proconsuls in the agencies. Intimidation and the threat of reductions in force (RIFs) and budget cuts undeniably caught the attention of bureaucrats. . . . (A)ppointees became [the] agent of an effort led by OMB Director David Stockman to force retrenchment on the federal bureaucracy, and . . . were associated with implementing deregulation in line with guidance from Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief. (Ibid., 360)
The Reagan personnel operation started in April 1980, a full seven months before his election. By late summer Pendleton James had an office up and running. He claimed five criteria for political appointments: "'compatibility with the President's philosophy, integrity, toughness, competence, and being a team player.' [However, above competence or expertise], loyalty as ideological consistency was applied far more exten-
 
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sively as the test for appointment in the Reagan administration than in any other presidency in at least a half century" (Newland 1983, 3)
However, the Far Right was not satisfied by the resultant choices and the week of the inauguration saw heavy criticism of both the process and the appointees. In response, "presidential appointments moved more to the ideological right, and ultra-conservatives were selected for some targeted positions." Even those moves were not enough to satisfy New Right critics, however (ibid.).
White House attempts to influence the PASs did not end with their confirmation:
Cabinet appointees met frequently with the president-elect to establish a bond that Reagan hoped would prevent them from "going native" later on. Lower-level appointees were thoroughly socialized about agency programs and operations before assuming their position; and they were socialized by Reagan aides and the conservative task forces, not by the career agency personnel whose corrupting influences were to be minimized. (Moe 1991, 151)
There is general agreement on the success of this approach: Reagan's subcabinet choices "tended to be even stronger ideologues than their cabinet superiors" (Nathan 1986, 130), exhibiting "an uncommon degree of ideological consistency and intensity" (Salamon and Abramson 1984, 46). The advantage of this strategy was that the subcabinet officers operated outside the "glare of the media spotlight in Washington" and were thus able to change agency policy to reflect ''pure Reagan conservative ideology [more] than the views of their generally more conciliatory cabinet chiefs." Like Nixon, Reagan focused on the big-ticket agencies that administered social programs of which he disapprovedHealth and Human Services, Labor, and Education (Nathan 1986, 131).
Reagan made significant changes in the bureaucracy through adroit use of these second- and third-tier PASs who in their agencies used administrative strategies to write, change, or delay regulations, deploy personnel, and rearrange budgets. There is a clear advantage of such a distancing tactic-the cabinet officials who shared Reagan's conservative ideology were the ones most likely to be pressured from office, with Reagan taking some heat for their activities (e.g., James Watt and Anne Burford Gorsuch) (ibid., 131). With subcabinet officials carrying out his orders, however, Reagan and his cabinet lieutenants were able to stay a step away from the action and therefore be insulated from blame. Nothing stuck to him; thus was born, in Representative Patricia Schroeder's memorable phrase, "The Teflon President."

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