The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (76 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Job Satisfaction and Appointee Numbers
Despite the Reagan-Bush growth in the number of appointees overall, PASs (by a plurality and often a majority) said the number of PAS, noncareer SES (NSES), career SES (CSES), and Schedule C employees should remain the same. This was most clearly seen in their own agency, where 81 percent of PASs said the number of PASs should remain as is. The same held for NSES (51 percent), CSES (45 percent), and Schedule C (57 percent) employees in the respondents' agency. This trend held governmentwide, where 57 percent of PASs said the number should remain the same, as should that for NSES (40 percent), CSES (43 percent), and Schedule C (46 percent) employees.
Given this debate over the appointee numbers, it is interesting that there was no relationship between job satisfaction and the optimal number of political appointees and career SESs. Pluralities, and often majorities, felt the number in all categories (PAS, NSES, CSES, and Schedule C) should remain the same, both in their agency and governmentwide, regardless of individual measures of satisfaction within the various indicators of job satisfaction.
It was particularly noteworthy that this sense that the numbers should remain the same held also for the two indicators that uniformly had the least number satisfied (ability to reassign or dismiss civil servants) and the most dissatisfied (the pace of government decision making). Apparently, unlike the Reagan appointees, most Bush PASs did not seek solutions to their problems in more appointees.
PASs clearly respected career expertise and the value of its neutral competence. Those who consulted most with CSESs on matters of policy feasibility, formulation, development, and implementation and on budget and staffing decisions uniformly believed there should be more rather than fewer CSESs, both in their agency and governmentwide.
Stress: Gnashing of Teeth as a Lifestyle
Great as were many of the satisfactions of PAS service, stress was barely below the surface for most PASs interviewed. These frustrations, all agreed, were the inescapable facts of government life: little or no control, little sense of completion, and the open-ended nature of government processes in which "nothing was ever over" and decision making was never brought to closure. Bureaucracy, administrative red tape, and the length of time it took to get things done were major causes of irritation for many of these action-oriented PASs. Again, most of the following
 
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comments, some painfully candid, were not for attribution.
One PAS named the problem as "not having a clear shot at making a decisionno authority to make a final decisionhundreds of people have the power to block any decision. Life in government is absolutely nutso, with all the relations between agencies that have to be built and bases that have to be touched. The system itself blocks authority and power. No one person has the authority to change the system."
Another PAS phrased his predicament as "never being in a position where I can command change in the way I want, both administratively and politically. I'm not able to make the changes I see need to be made in the agency or fix the things that need to be fixed." There was the sense, as one PAS expressed it, of "If I could just run that agency myself, goddamn it, I could fix it" (a not uncommon sentiment in Washington).
Financial limitations weighed heavily on some PASs, creating, as one put it, the pressure of "not being able to do everything that needs to be done, never having enough resources and people to do the job." Nixonian fears of PASs "going native" appeared not ungroundedcommitment to doing a good job seemed to override orthodox Republican devotion to shrinking both government and taxes. (Additionally, it makes no sense to assume that growth-oriented business people whose previous work life revolved around expansion of their domain were suddenly going to rein in their ambition simply because they worked for the governmentReaganite Republicans and Libertarians who succeed in getting their private-sector people into office should expect a certain measure of disappointment on this score.)
One PAS spoke of the turf battles he felt compelled to fight:
I'm bothered that government feeds on itselfthere are lots of turf battles. Interior, for example has lots of problemsits divisions fight one another. My greatest disappointment in government service is the battle for turfit's agency versus agency, department versus department, etc. But I do recognize that such is the way of Washingtonrather than living by the code that we all work for the same country.
His agency was one of those noted previously that was required to consult with other agencies before issuing regulations. With no limit on their response time other agencies could, in effect, block his agency by delaying their answer.
Allan Bromley, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President, spoke of how hard it was to keep the flow of people moving between the public and private sectors.
 
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"Expertise is harder to borrow from the private sector. Conflict of interest strictures mean we can only bring in those who are retired or just out of school and not yet established."
Fred Hitz, inspector general at the CIA, felt the ethics regulations and other restraints were too intrusive into peoples' lives. The financial disclosure and blind trust requirements were onerous and had a detrimental effect on getting people of means to come into government.
Bromley noted another problem in an increasingly litigious society. "The rules are interpreted more narrowly by each generation of lawyers in the agencies. They are nervous and interpret the regulations in the most restrictive way so no one can blame them if things go wrong."
Others discussed the lack of annual leave (vacation) or sick leave. Because no one monitors their time, PASs are expected to build off-time and vacations into their schedules, but that can be nearly impossible in these high-stress jobs. As one PAS noted, "You can't be out of touchand if you are, you're in trouble." They have the freedom to come and go as they please but lack the protection of having a supervisor or structure tell them when it is time to take a vacation.
There was also the pressure of being watched, both within the agency and without (the ever-present
Washington Post
loomed large in many interviews). As one said, "It's the frustration inherent in managing any large bureaucracy and the constant criticism the agency comes under, no matter what we do." Said another, "The IG watches you like a hound and has to investigate even anonymous allegations, no matter how far-fetched."
Phillips mentioned that, in addition to the requirements that they "give up everything, resign from everything, and make financial sacrifices," there is also some loss of intellectual freedom. PASs cannot serve on boards, cannot speak and write as much as they might like to, and cannot freelance theory. They have to be very careful because anything they might say or write carries disproportionate weight.
Time pressures were a constant feature of PASs' life. Some noted the lack of "quality time" to do strategic or long-range planning, with constant demands on their time, many beyond their control ("In an IG world the priorities are changing almost hourly"). There was also congressional pressure on their products (reports). Other factors and players beyond their control also contributed to stress. The eighteen-month federal budget cycle, for example, is beyond their control. Yet, they have to produce their agency's next year budget request while they still do not know exactly what their previous year's budget will be. Further, as discussed earlier, the federal budget process was baffling for many PASs. They were un-
 
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sure of the players and the rules. One expressed frustration with the external constraints on what he could request and the fact that "no rationalization was given for budget decisions made on high."
Personal finances were a source of complaint for some. Retired federal employees called to PAS duty (reemployed annuitants) only receive the difference between their retirement pay and their PAS salary. Though they knew this going in, it still galled some. One noted that he was ill-prepared for the personal financial costs of the job. The costs of doing business come out of their own pockets in many cases and PASs are expected to operate on a high executive level, often on a lower salary than they enjoyed in the private sector. This is a major adjustment for those coming from the corporate world.
There is no free lunch for PASsthey cannot accept meals or various other "freebies" to which many had become accustomed as part of corporate life. Adding insult to injury, their career people were often the ones who had to explain the ethics rules to them, which put the careerists in the awkward position of being negative, of "saying no to the boss." The IGs in particular operate under more stringent ethics rules due to their policing function, while the other PASs do have more freedom because they are expected to act for a political agenda.
Congress came in for its share of criticism for its attempt to micromanage the executive branch agencies. This was seen as a natural executive-legislative tension, more related to turf than party. "The fault-finding and micromanagement wear you down. Taking a chance and the risk of producing a mistake are not tolerated. You take constant berating and battering and there's not much you can do about ityou don't have the leverage to make reform in the federal government. There's a lot of second guessing."
Vincent Foster, one of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's top advisors and personal friends, committed suicide in July 1993. Although Foster was the victim of clinical depression, the particular reasons for his death remain largely a mystery. However, they seemed not unrelated to the strain of life in the national pressure cooker. A note Foster wrote to himself read, "Here, ruining people is considered sport." This seems an apt description of much of political and journalistic Washington. It was echoed by one male PAS: "There is little or no pleasure or joy in my jobjust lots of misery. My agency is a macho environmentone proves oneself by besting one's opponents. People get caught up in a 'political appointee' syndrome, but that's not why we're here. People aren't being served by the system as it operates this way."
 
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It was the atmosphere of "zero defects/zero tolerance for error" that made their jobs so difficult, according to many PASs. There was simply no margin for error. If it was not Congress, GAO, and the press looking over their shoulder, they had to worry about their own IG micromanaging their work, said some. As the Fed's Phillips observed, "In government there's much more of a premium on being right. You have to bring people along, build a consensus for decision making. In the private sector you can afford to be wrong. In the public sector you don't have that luxury."
Given the action-oriented nature of the PASs and the satisfaction they took in being able to "get things done," it is hardly surprising that the major areas of dissatisfaction were the ever-unpopular inability to reassign or dismiss civil service workers (73 percent) and the pace of government decision making (52 percent). Those coming from the business sector were most likely to feel irked by these factors. As one PAS said, "In the private sector you give an order and it tends to get carried out. In the public sector you give an order and it's the beginning of a negotiation." This sense of frustration was also borne out in the interviews, as discussed above.
OPM got only lukewarm support, with 40 percent of the Bush PAS Survey respondents being "generally" or "very" satisfied in their dealings with it, 19 percent being "generally" or "very" dissatisfied, and 40 percent being neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.
Some reasons for the overall low satisfactory rating of OPM were revealed in the PAS interviews. OPM has general administrative responsibility for the civil service employees, Schedule C, and Senior Executive Service members assigned to the agencies. Although the White House or the agency hires a particular political appointee, OPM designates the number of SES positions that each agency is allocated and its Qualifications Review Board certifies potential appointees as eligible for appointment. As one researcher remarked, "OPM is viewed as a bottleneck. They can always come up with ten reasons to tell you why you can't do what you want to do when what you want to do is legitimate."
OPM's problem might be similar to that of OMBtoo-limited "retail level" experience. As explained by one frustrated PAS:
OPM has limited vision for the needs and financing for field staffwhat they can be paid, the overall intent and direction of our program. OPM just doesn't understand the needs of this agency; it insists on compartmentalizing departments according to some standardized format. There is a rigidity in the OPM structure that is loosening a little, but only

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