The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (32 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Congress, organized special interests, party leaders' prominent friends, and supporters of the presidentand at times even foreign governments. Not without justification, President Taft lamented, "Every time I make an appointment I create nine enemies and one ingrate." Competition can be fierce, leaving a field of bruised egos. Frequently, administration officials promote their own favorite candidates. . . . .According to Macy], "There is more personal patronage than political patronage in every administrationit's people you know." (Bonafede 1987a, 33)
Money, "the mother's milk of politics," has often helped smooth the way for a presidential appointment, or so it would seem. What commentator Bill Moyers refers to as the "money-policy connection" was at work in Bush's 1992 State of the Union address when he pledged to "modify the passive loss rule for active real estate developers." This amounted to "a giant tax break for . . . the wealthy folks who helped put Mr. Bush in the White House by giving big money to political action committees that promoted Mr. Bush's candidacy . . . Anywhere but in Washington, they'd call it bribery . . . . Moyers calls it 'legalized corruption,' part of our 'mercenary culture where the vote doesn't matter as much as the dollar.'"
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Moyers calls the tax break
a straightforward quid pro quo. Before public financing became available for his presidential campaign in 1988, Bush operatives put together the Bush Team 100, a group of 249 people who contributed $100,000 or more to political action committees that indirectly helped Bush. [Many] were later named ambassadors to foreign nations. And many others were real estate men, including Alfred Taubman and Donald Trump, who now benefit from the change in the "passive loss rule." Their $100,000 contributions turned out to be shrewd investments.
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Eventually, eight persons who had contributed at least $100,000 to the National Republican Party's 1988 campaign for the White House were awarded ambassadorships. Three other such nominees were denied this prize, however, by a wary Senate Judiciary Committee, prodded by Senator Paul Sarbanes.
There is an ironic twist to presidential appointments in that those individuals chosen for political positions who come solely from the White House are viewed with suspicion by all the other policy actors (Congress, the bureaucracy, interest groups, etc.). Their effectiveness in carrying out administration policy within their agencies is compromised by their status as White House emissaries. If seen as "carrying the President's flag and acting as his eyes and ears, [the PAS] may well be shut out of just the
 
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decision-making processes he was sent to infiltrate." The other PASs and both the career and noncareer SES executives of the agency are much more likely to work well with a newcomer if they are consulted ahead of time on the appointment than if they feel that person is foisted on them by a suspicious White House. Consequently, those most loyal to the White House and owing their position solely to it are the least likely to be effective in impacting the bureaucracy (Mackenzie 1981, 249).
The debate over the degree of presidential control in appointments has gone on since the advent of the modern presidency. One side supports White House control in order to foster loyalty to the president. The other endorses cabinet control to facilitate better working relationships within agencies.
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However, this is a somewhat moot debate if seen in black and white terms. One solution is a double veto, or put more positively, mutual accommodation, to satisfy both sets of authority needs;
a delicate negotiation between White House personnel officer and cabinet official that leaves neither totally dissatisfied if they cannot agree wholeheartedly. Most important is that all participants understand the rules. New cabinet officers must know how their top aides will be selected. Failing to set things straight at the beginning, a problem in the Carter administration, inevitably leads to friction. But no matter how sophisticated the apparatus, presidential appointments will always be subject to the intractable tension between loyalty and expertise. A new president must somehow balance the deserving claims of campaign and party faithful with the need for quality and experience. Sometimes they happily coincide. Often they do not. (Hess 1988, 201)
A second effect of the diffuse nature of the appointment process is that it contributes to what Heclo has labeled "a government of strangers." Because administrations are put together hurriedly after an election, the PASs are
drawn from no common source, and their political bonds, even in the best of circumstances are tenuous. They lack the unity that might be provided by a programmatic political party, by a set of consistent and clear selection criteria, or by any other coherent frame of reference. Instead, the tendency is to choose each member individually, often at different times, usually for different reasons, and frequently with different sponsors or supporters. The ad hoc nature of the contemporary appointment process guarantees this result. Just as each selection decision rotates on its own
 
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axis, so each appointee arrives with his own kit bag of abilities, attitudes, loyalties, and commitments. (Mackenzie 1981, 249-50)
This, however, was Mackenzie writing in 1981, at the dawn of what was to be the unprecedented tour de force of ideological purity and unity known as the ''Reagan Revolution." Now, more than a decade later, one can observe the changed nature of political appointments, which actually began with the election of the outsider Jimmy Carter. While in the past the national parties had been the main source of pressure for presidential appointments, the power of the parties declined as that of interest groups grew. This means that contemporary appointment pressure
is more likely to spring from the coalition of groups that have now replaced party organizations as the chief political allies on whom presidential candidates must rely during their long pilgrimage to the White House. Jimmy Carter ran without the blessing of major segments of his own political party, and he was most beholden to outside groups, like the National Education Association (NEA), that provided the organizational muscle for his presidential campaign, particularly during the primary season. Not surprisingly, a number of former leaders of such groups subsequently showed up in the Carter administration. (Rourke 1991b, 127)
Similar pressures materialized in Reagan's appointments. "Many of Ronald Reagan's early appointments reflected the fact that his election in 1980 was as much the triumph of a rising conservative political philosophy as it was the victory of a political party." As discussed above, Reagan's personnel director, Pendelton James, came under fierce attack from conservatives even during the inauguration week for bringing in too many Nixon and Eisenhower "retreads" or others who had not supported Reagan early enough or strongly enough. He was thus forced to send more appointments their way to appease the conservatives (ibid., 127). The same pressures later beset President Bush.
These New Right PASs served with varying degrees of success. Some became good soldiers of administration policy. "Others, however, proved to be stormy petrelsmore attached to their own creed than to the goals of the president, or perhaps, as in the case of the 'Right to Life' movement, bent on actually achieving goals to which the Reagan White Houseat least in its early yearswas prepared only to give lip service" (ibid., 127).
Partisan considerations aside, there are some positions the president is not free to fill solely on political grounds. Scientific, medical, and tech-

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