The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (37 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Page 114
term). Three different sources, two executive, one congressional, demonstrate this problem of ascertaining exact numbers of PASs.
The congressional version comes from
The United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions
(commonly called the
Plum Book),
published quadrennially in presidential election years by the Senate or by the House alternately. An invaluable resource, it catalogues by agency or department all the allocated executive and Schedule C positions throughout the government authorized as of the summer of the year just prior to the election. The 1992 version is instructive, seen next to the EOP and OPM lists (data from each office given personally to the author) (see table 4.1).
The Plum Book
also lists 4,305 General SES positions (to which either a noncareer or a career appointment may be made). By this count, then, presidents have at least 4,795 positions (plus an indeterminate number in the General SES category) to fill by appointment. Further confusing the search for hard numbers, Pfiffner (1994, 123) lists a total of 5,823. (Of the Senate-confirmed there are 505 part-timers, 165 ambassadors, 187 U.S. attorneys and marshals, and 663 executives and IRCs. Of the nonconfirmed there are 24 executive branch officials, 438 White House officials, and 1,405 part-timers. There are 711 SESs and 1,725 Schedule Cs.)
While PAS positions are established by Congress, it is often difficult for those outside the executive branch to gather pertinent information to make an accurate and current count of the political appointees, as the above attempt at enumeration demonstrates. Also, the president can change the executive level of any PAS position, request that Congress create a new position, or delete or downgrade a position to SES status. (Schedule C positions are not statutory positions; they do not exist when
Table 4.1. Political Positions According to
The Plum Book,
EOP, and OPM
Position
Plum Book 1992
EOP
10/31/91
OPM
6/30/92
PAS (both part-and full-time)
1,163
903 (nonjudicial)
693
Noncareer SES
723
485
(mid-1989)
731
Schedule C
1,794
1,005
(mid-1989)
1,735
PA
561
225
Statutory excepted
459
SES limited or emergency
62
Other
22
 
Page 115
vacant and they have to be requested by an agency or the White House in order to be recreated by OPM once their incumbent has left.)
Useful as the
Plum Book
is, it is not infallible. It lists far fewer staff available to the White House than actually work there (many are detailed from the agencies and thus hidden from accurate cost accounting) and, by a quick glance, is incorrect in its count in at least one agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, which is listed as having two PASs but which actually has three. It also fails to register the 903 judges appointed to the federal bench in the judicial branch.
The inclusion of presidential staff, other White House staff, military, foreign service appointments and part-time appointments are points of continuing debate. Since 1978, the Senior Executive Service has added a new dimension to [the] total appointee count. . . . "hidden appointees," known only to White House personnel office staff [the detailees and nondetailees], who elude official counts. Despite these concerns, there is general agreement, among even the most conservative counters, that the total number of political appointees has increased in the last ten years. It is only the dimension of the increase that is in dispute [given the difficulty of finding agreement on whom to count]. (Ingraham 1987, 426-27)
The Executive Office of the President houses a unique genre of political appointees and is a far-flung operation that serves the president's needs on every front.
10
In addition to the president's personal office and physician, there are the chief of staff and deputy chief, personal assistant, press secretary, cabinet secretary, executive secretaries of cabinet councils, and assistants for national security affairs, domestic policy, legislative affairs, political affairs, and intergovernmental affairs. There is legal counsel, a director of communications, press secretary, public liaison staff, speech writers and researchers, the presidential personnel office, advance and ad hoc special assistance, and military office staff covering everything from Air Force One to Camp David to the Naval Imaging Command to the White House Garage. The EOP also includes the White House units of the Secret Service, the chief usher, and the operations office that handles everything from correspondence to telephones to records to visitors. The Office of Management and Budget OMB), the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), and the National Security Council (NSC) are also related to the EOP (Patterson 1988, 91).
Additionally, the Office of the Vice President, housed in the West Wing of the White House, has a full staff complement of some ninety, including a chief of staff and a deputy; personal, military, legislative affairs,
 
Page 116
and national security affairs assistants; counsel; speech writers; a press secretary; and advance and scheduling staff. The Office of the First Lady, housed in the East Wing, has a staff of approximately thirty, including a chief of staff, personal assistant, press and social secretaries, correspondence, scheduling and advance staff, and a graphics and calligraphy office (ibid., 91).
John Hart lists the total number of staff at the White House at 1,692 (not counting detailees) with a total budget of $172,596,000 (not counting special funds) for fiscal year 1994 (see table 4.2).
This count does not include the military office (1,300 full time, 2,500 part time), the Executive Residence staff (129), engineering and maintenance staff (190), the U.S. Secret Service assigned to the president and vice
Table 4.2. Executive Office of the President Budget and Personnel, FY 1994
Division
Budget ($)
Staff (as of 10/1/94)
Office of Management and Budget
56,539,000
572
White House Office
38,754,000
430
Office of Administration
25,010,000
189
Office of U.S. Trade Representative
20,600,000
191
Office of National Drug Control Policy
11,687,000
25
National Security Council
6,648,000
147
Office of Policy Development (includes National Economic Council, Domestic Policy Council, and Office of Environmental Policy)
5,122,000
50
Office of Science and Technology Policy
4,450,000
46
Council of Economic Advisers
3,420,000
35
Council on Environmental Quality
375,000
0
Total
172,596,000
a
1,685
Source:
John Hart,
The Presidential Branch: From Washington to Clinton.
2d ed. (Chatham, N.J.
Chatham House, 1995), 46.
a
Amount indicated as in original.
 
Page 117
president (800) or the 500 volunteers who answer correspondence (ibid., 339).
Ever since Watergate there have been concerns over the size of the White House staff and, as mentioned, calls for its reduction. President Clinton, to demonstrate his serious intent to deal with the budget deficit and as a part of his overall pledge to reduce government by 12 percent, reduced the White House staff by 350 in the third week of his administration (Hart 1995, 48). His symbolic gesture caused more pain than gain, however, as well-experienced staff performing key correspondence and other functions were let go and there were often not enough people to handle the workload.
Meanwhile, the larger debate about the role of political appointees has continued along with the growth in appointments. The Volcker Commission joined the debate about the optimal number of political appointees and concluded that, in the words of two of its members, "fewer is better." They note the power PASs possess; they "sit at the top of the executive branch hierarchies and have the power to make policy, reorganize their agencies and hire and fire people, within the limits of the law. Their numbers may be relatively small, but their power is highly leveraged" (Richardson and Pfiffner 1991, 56).
The Reagan appointees' desire to change government quickly was coupled with a near-unanimous desire for more political appointees, because it was felt "you need to have people with you who you can trust immediately. . . . You need more political slots so you can have a team that can hit the ground running" (Ban and Ingraham 1990, 118).
The wish to maximize control led many of the appointees to push for placement of appointees deep down in the line agencies. In their haste they seemed unaware of or unconcerned about the danger that having more appointees would most likely insulate them further from their career staff, thus actually working against their ability to control them or even to establish good working relationships with them (ibid., 118-19). They seemed also not to have learned Nixon's lesson that more appointees equals less, not more, control.
On the other hand, there were those in the Ban and Ingraham study who expressed reservations about working with other appointees, precisely because they are so subject to external political pressures and may not really understand how the game is played: "They think they understand the political process, and most of them don't." Additionally, some questioned the competence of the appointees, particularly the noncareer SESs: "Over one-third of the
political
executives we interviewed offered unsolicited critical comments about their fellow appointees: 'A lot of po-

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