The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (44 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Page 139
American farmers. White House aides can also absorb punishment for a president by performing unpleasant tasks like firing people. Sherman Adams played this role for President Eisenhower [''better you than me," said the latter to the former], as did H.R. Haldeman some years later for President Nixon. (Ibid., 124-25)
More recently, Bush Veterans Affairs' Secretary Edward Derwinski faced a concentrated attack by the veterans' lobby when he suggested closing or redefining the mission of underutilized VA hospitals to cut costs and provide care for underserved poor civilian communities. The resulting furor from the veterans' lobby during the 1992 presidential campaign so panicked Candidate Bush that he jettisoned Derwinski and his plan in hopes of an endorsement that never came.
6
The deficits of the short-termer system are well known, documented in these and other examples. However, as Pfiffner points out, while the system is often inefficient and suffers rapid turnover and abrupt policy shifts, efficiency is not the only value in a democracy. And, in fact, inefficiency "is a small price to pay for a system that brings with it the ability to respond rapidly to the wishes of the electorate," as the political appointments system does at its best (Pfiffner 1987c, 62).
The short-termer system has other advantages:
In addition to providing this democratic link. . . . It brings into the bureaucracy fresh ideas and "new blood" to try them out. It brings in people who have not been worn down by the system and who can afford to work at full speed for the president's program for several years and return to their previous careers when they approach the burnout stage. It brings in people who are working on the cutting edge of new technologies or management practice, people who can transfer new ways of doing things to the government. (Ibid., 62)
Bureaucratic Costs of the Short-Termer System: Responsiveness and Effectiveness
There is, however, a downside to a personnel system that inherently features frequent turnover. It is possible to have too much of a good thing.
Turnover at the excessively high rate American government has today makes it much more difficult to achieve the political responsiveness that lies at the very heart of the in-and-outer system. In addition to making it harder for presidents to establish coherent and effective administrations,
 
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it makes government less efficient, leaving the career civil service alternately either without a clear sense of direction or too much affected by narrow bureaucratic interests. Finally, and with increasing significance as the world becomes more interdependent, excessively high turnover puts at a disadvantage presidential appointees who have to deal with foreign governments. (Brauer 1987, 193-94)
The "unplanned evolution" of the presidential appointments process away from the theoretically "rejuvenating, energizing potential of the in-and-outer system" has led to "a troubling paradox. As excellent leadership becomes an ever more important ingredient in effective government, excellent leaders are ever more difficult for government to recruit and retain. For those who wonder about the future capacity of American public administration to confront and solve the complex problems that now crowd the public policy agency, it is a chilling prospect" (Mackenzie 1987, xix).
Though previous government service gives seasoned PASs a leg up on the whole initiation process, Heclo feels that the duration of executive relationships is even more important than tenure and government experience. The instability caused by short tenure certainly also applies to those new to government who have the added burden of figuring out even the basics of how it all works. As noted above, if it takes six months for a new PAS to get acclimated to Washington's political climate and another six months to begin operating well in it, given the average turnover rates of eighteen to twenty-two months, PASs have barely a year or so of effective performance (Rehfuss 1973, 130).
Additionally, as discussed previously, the replacement of career executives with appointees in the government means that civil servants' careers now top out earlier than in previous generations. The deputy assistant secretary positions were the top career positions from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Deputy assistant secretaries managed thousands of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars, and major public policies. By the 1980s, however, most of these positions had been converted to political appointments (Richardson and Pfiffner 1991, 56). As of late 1993 there were only three careerists in deputy assistant secretary positions (Executive Level 4 equivalent) in all of government service.
As previously noted, the elimination of this top career position means that careerists are more likely to leave government service out of frustration, as the positions to which they formerly could have aspired are now occupied by short-time appointees "who may often have less experience, expertise, or competence. The resulting lack of high-quality career man-
 
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agers in the executive branch will hurt individual presidents. But more importantly, it will undermine the longer-term capacity of the government to function" (ibid., 56).
The topping out caused by downward PAS infiltration removes the incentive for career upward mobility; it also guts aspirations for excellence or innovation. According to John Gardner,
There are far more political appointees, and the political tests of those appointees are narrower and sharper, certainly more deeply partisan over the past 15 years. Also, the degree to which they subordinate the career people under them, diminishing the integrity and dignity of the career people, is increasing. You can't have an effective government with people who are cowed and dumped on. (Qtd. in Pfiffner 1987c, 63)
The argument that the president needs to have his or her "own people" in place to strengthen the executive branch vis-à-vis the Congress is undercut by the fact, previously observed, that many PASs have other loyalties, i.e., to the Congress, interest groups, or the party, whose members may have sponsored their appointment. So having more appointees may even exacerbate, rather than solve, the problem (Richardson and Pfiffner 1991, 58).
Furthermore, the more political appointees there are, the thicker is the layer between the upper levels and the careerists, and the harder it is to build good working relationships. The more layers, the more time is needed to build relationships, but time is a very scarce commodity for appointees who are focused on short-term goals and quick turnaround. The many layers, then, impede contact between the two and slow down hoped-for change, à la Nixon. As Light notes, "It may be increasingly the case that the two worlds of political and careerists never collide at all, because the two groups move through separate space with little or no opportunity for contact (Light 1987, 157).
Limited contact leads to less effective control and more appointee frustration with bureaucracy. Interestingly, however, this frustration does not seem to devolve onto the career bureaucrats with whom appointees work. It is a truism that "political appointees love their bureaucrats, but hate bureaucracy" (Moe 1991, 157). PASs believe the careerists with whom they work
are competent and responsive. Those views do not vary much across presidential administrations, party, ideology, number of hours worked per week, gender, year appointed (first, second, third, or fourth), or race. In-

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