The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (64 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Source:
The Bush PAS Survey
Note:
Between 165 and 180 PASs provided information.
their position (51 percent), now planning to resume their previous earning power. Interestingly, the percent of those who indicated they had taken a moderate-to-great financial loss in accepting their Bush PAS position was very close to that reporting the same loss in the 1985 NAPA study of PASs who served between 1964 and 1984 (55 percent). This is not surprising, since PASs of any administration are drawn largely from the same socioeconomic classes.
Some planned to leave the administration for financial reasons even if Bush had been reelected. Energy Secretary James D. Watkins, for example, felt he could not afford the loss of military retirement pay he sustained when he signed on with the administration. "I can't afford it any more. I have had to give up $300,000 in retirement pay," he said.
1
On the other hand, in the NAPA study of previous PASs, only 16.5 percent indicated that their service in government actually had significantly increased their earning power. It is likely that the expectations of the 36 percent of the Bush PASs who anticipated a significant raise, post service, were out of line with reality. This sad supposition seems to have come true in the wake of the Bush defeat, when many Washington-based PASs found themselves a surplus commodity on the political employ-
 
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ment market, according to several
Washington Post
articles chronicling their fate.
It was clear from the Bush PAS Survey that in terms of identity, the PASs were a relatively homogeneous group as far as gender, race, education, and class were concerned. Given that many had recycled from Ronald Reagan's administrations, it was unlikely that the Bush PASs differed demographically in great detail from their immediate predecessors. How they may differ from their successors remains to be seen.
Qualifications: Revisiting the Conventional Wisdom
The lack of qualifications of many of the Reagan appointees has been enshrined in conventional wisdom (see chapter 2 for this discussion). To what extent did the Bush appointees fit that picture?
One means of assessing qualifications for PAS service is to consider previous employment. Thanks to the two previous Republican administrations (Reagan 1 and Reagan 2, as they are called), nearly half of Bush's PASs came directly from government (another 38 percent came from the business sector, law firms, and academia).
While some PASs were veteran presidential appointees, holding as many as six PAS positions over the past ten administrations, the Bush PAS Survey results indicated that for the great majority (79 percent), this was their first PAS position. This number, probably accurate, casts doubt on the claim of 67 percent of the Bush PASs that they had held a PAS position in Reagan 2. Most likely they were unclear about terminology (strange, if true, given their current positions); for many it was a political, noncareer SES or Schedule C position, rather than a PAS position that they had held previously. Indeed, many in the Bush PAS group (sixty-seven) had served in noncareer SES positions (median number of positions, one), Schedule C positions (fifty-eight: median, one position), or other federal employment (ninety-four: median, two positions). Because these groups overlap, it is difficult to determine the exact number of the PASs who had had previous federal government experience, but clearly, a very high percentage of the Bush appointees were
not
newcomers. This was in clear contrast to the PASs of Reagan 1, the great majority of whom had not served previously in the federal government.
A fair number of PASs had also had had personal experience in electoral politics beyond the presidency, some thirty having been elected previously to at least one office. City government claimed thirteen elected officials serving a range of two to eighteen years with a median of six
 
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years. Six persons had been elected to county government with a range of one to twenty-three years of service, also with a median of six years. Eleven had been elected to state government with a range of four to nineteen years (median six years) and two had been elected to serve in the federal government with a range of fourteen to twenty years (median seventeen years). These are in addition to others who had run unsuccessfully.
While many leave Washington after their PAS service, many also stay and recycle, if not into government, at least into the lobbying business. Washington's Revolving Door was still fully operational for the Bush PASs, despite the Republican loss of the White House in 1992; there were clearly those who gained a great deal, thanks to the contacts they made during their PAS time. Given where they came from, where did the Bush PASs expect to go after they left the administration? (see table 7.3).
Generally, the PASs sorted themselves out over the options offered for postgovernment service more evenly than they had for their pre-PAS employment (respondents were asked to check as many options as applied for the future). Clearly, many who had previously worked for the government (possibly in political positions) planned to go elsewhere after the election, even if Bush were to be reelected.
Table 7.3. Where Did The Bush PASs Work Before and Where Did They Expect to Work After Their Current Jobs?
Employment Setting
Pre-PAS Occupation
(%) N=180
Post-PAS Expectations
a
(%)
N=146
Federal, state, or local government
48
23
Business/corporate
18
46
Self-employed
6
38
College/research
11
37
Think tank
1
17
Interest group
1
8
Law firm
9
22
Nonprofit organization
3
20
Retirement
0
14
Undecided
-
16
Source: The Bush PAS survey.
a
Respondents were given the opportunity to check multiple responses for this category.
 
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Many expected to go into the corporate sector, research firms, or think tanks, Washington's local cottage industry. Constance Horner, head of Bush's PPO, for example, landed at the Brookings Institution as a guest scholar. Others, such as Jack Kemp, secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Richard Cheney, secretary of defense (DOD), went to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, respectively, Washington bastions of conservative thought. Both men briefly nurtured presidential ambitions in the 1996 campaign. Some, such as White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, founded their own think tanks to keep the Republican flame alive and strategize for the 1994 and 1996 elections. Others took to the airwaves for the same purpose, such as Lynn Martin, secretary of labor, who went to work as a radio commentator, and White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, who went into television.
Those choosing self-employment might be planning to go through the revolving door to market their access to Congress and the agencies they formerly supervised (within Office of Government ethics restrictions, presumably) as consultants or lobbyists to various business or even foreign interests. Edward Derwinski, secretary of veterans affairs, and Carla A. Hills, U.S. trade representative, among others, formed their own consulting firms.
Some went directly into lobbying. Manuel Lujan, Jr., secretary of the interior, for instance, became a lobbyist for a development company whose efforts to build a resort on Park Service land in New Mexico he had supported while in the administration. HUD's deputy secretary, Alfred DelliBovi, with no previous banking experience, became president of a specialized government-backed bank that lends mortgage money to savings and loans associations. His 1992 PAS salary was $129,500. His new salary: more than $250,000.
Others wrote books, formed political action committees (PACs), and went on the lecture circuit, some to assess presidential possibilities, such as William J. Bennett, Bush drug czar and former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Jack Kemp; Lamar Alexander, secretary of education; James A. Baker, III, secretary of state and Bush campaign chief; Lynn Martin; and Richard Cheney. Oliver North went stumping for a Senate seat from Virginia and became a millionaire in the process, thanks to book royalties and $25,000 speaking fees. Others did it just for the money, such as generals Norman Schwartzkopf and Colin Powell (the latter's standard speech fee is $60,000, and his book deal paid $6 million).
Some went into other government jobs, such as four-time PAS Constance Berry Newman, director of Bush's Office of Personnel Management who became deputy at the Smithsonian Institution. One Reagan PAS
 
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even recycled into the Clinton White House, to the astonishment of Washington wags. David R. Gergen, senior policy advisor to Reagan, previously having been recycled from Nixon, claimed no savings when he left Reagan's employ in 1984 for the television, think tank, news media, and lecture circuit. His White House experience paid off handsomely. A popular speaker and writer, his income shot up dramatically, such that he earned more than $1 million in the seventeen months of January 1992 through May 1993, when he joined the Clinton White House and dropped back down to the more mundane $125,000 salary for his EL 3 position.
A term or two as president proved a good revenue enhancer. Japanese tours seem to be particularly profitableRonald Reagan earned an infamous $2 million fee from Japan for two twenty-minute speeches and several appearances during a weeklong visit in 1989. George Bush gave his family values speeches for the controversial Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon for a fee unspecified but widely assumed to be well into seven figures. Bush's post-White House standard stump fee was $80,000, but he made $100,000 for a single speech to the 1993 Amway Convention. Being a former first lady or vice president had its rewards, as well. Barbara Bush's usual fee for a single speech was between $40,000 and $60,000, while Dan Quayle's was around $12,500.
Quayle went back to his family business of newspaper publishing and joined the Hudson Institute as chair of its Competitiveness Center, while nurturing hopes of an eventual return to public office. Marilyn Quayle, outspoken defender of traditional womanhood and keeper of the home fires, added back her original family name (Tucker) and resumed her law career, joining a law firm in Indiana and leaving her husband in Washington to care for their four children for the remainder of the school year.
In the past two decades, law firms around the nation have seen the value of having a Washington office, creating a massive jobs program for recycled politicians. Many PASs, such as Lamar Alexander, James Baker, Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Attorney General William P. Barr, and Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, went that route. Some PASs went into academia, such as Louis Sullivan, secretary of Health and Human Services, who became president at Morehouse College School of Medicine, and others went into public interest advocacy, such as William Reilly, Environmental Protection Agency chief, who became senior fellow at the World Wildlife Fund.
Some moves, while legal, prompted public outrage: Abraham D. Sofaer, a former federal judge and the State Department's top lawyer from 1985 to 1990, agreed for an undisclosed sum (widely believed to be at least

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