The Players

Timothy B. Clark and Charles Green — Sun, 15 Feb 2004 00:00:00 -0500

hree years ago, few people had ever heard the phrase "homeland security," and the very idea had little meaning outside of several think tanks and government commissions. But in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, the U.S. government has established a huge, new Homeland Security Department and has appropriated many billions of dollars in the hope of preventing further terrorism in our country. New institutional relationships are being forged not only in the federal bureaucracy and in Congress, but also between Washington and key players in state and local government and in the private sector.

This special supplement focuses on some of the people playing important roles in policy development and implementation in the field of homeland security. A total of 100 people are profiled: officials in the Homeland Security Department and other parts of the executive branch; members of Congress and congressional aides; state and local officials; and outside experts in academia, think tanks, and private industry. We make no claim that these are the top 100 people in homeland security. But they are key people-and worth knowing about if you're interested in the field.

How were they selected? Reporters and editors at both Government Executive and National Journal had a hand in the process. Government Executive staffers picked about 40 of the profilees, focusing on executive branch officials responsible for running, shaping, or providing essential support for homeland security programs. National Journal staffers selected the remainder-mostly members of Congress and congressional aides in key positions, and state and local officials and outside experts considered influential in the field.

We decided to join forces on this supplement to tap into the expertise of both publications. As a magazine serving senior executives and managers in the federal government's departments and agencies, Government Executive is uniquely qualified to write about officials charged with the task of defending the homeland. National Journal, a weekly magazine on politics and government, closely follows debates over homeland-security policy in Congress and outside Washington, as well as in the executive branch.

Our thanks to the staff members from Government Executive and National Journal who produced this issue. You can order additional copies of this supplement by calling 202-266-7322.

Timothy B. Clark
Editor and President,
Government Executive

Charles Green
Editor,
National Journal

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About National Journal's 'Grading the Cabinet' project

Charles Green — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0500

We thought it would be useful to devote an issue of National Journal to assessing the performance of President Bush's Cabinet-both the high-profile stars who regularly turn up in the news and the lower-profile secretaries who toil outside the spotlight. But what's the best way to examine performance? We didn't want to pass judgment on the merits of a Cabinet secretary's policy proposals or regulatory actions. And we wanted to avoid measuring a Cabinet secretary against some idealized notion of what his or her job should be.

In the end, we settled on four ways of looking at their performance:

Their influence within the Bush administration on matters related to their departments.
Their clout on Capitol Hill.
Their success in helping the president politically.
Their management of their departments.

As you've probably noticed already, we didn't limit ourselves to writing about how they fared in these four categories. We also graded them-in the four categories and overall. Why? Our feeling was that grades, backed up by extensive reporting, would give the project the clarity it needed to be useful. Does grading involve subjective judgments? Of course. Can reasonable people disagree with the grades we've assigned? Absolutely.

Recognizing the limitations of any grading system, we want to be as open as possible about how we ended up with these report cards. Here's how the process worked: A team of three reporters was assigned to each Cabinet secretary. Each team interviewed upwards of 30 people-administration officials, members of Congress, Capitol Hill aides, interest-group representatives, and others. Working from a common set of instructions, the teams graded the Cabinet members, then justified the grades to a panel of National Journal editors and reporters. In some cases, the review panel adjusted grades slightly to try to ensure that grading standards were consistent from one team to another.

We examined the performance of the 14 Cabinet secretaries, and of the heads of three agencies with Cabinet-level status (Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Management and Budget, and U.S. Trade Representative). We added the director of the CIA to the list because of the agency's increased importance in the wake of 9/11.

We did not grade three other officials with Cabinet-level status (Vice President Dick Cheney, Office of National Drug Control Policy Director John Walters, and Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, although we did write about Ridge), because their responsibilities inside the White House placed them outside our four categories.

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Government Executive - Authors - Charles Green

The Players

About National Journal's 'Grading the Cabinet' project