Government Executive - Authors - Dick Kirschten

Spy games

Dick Kirschten — Tue, 04 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Everybody loves a good spy story. And what could be more dramatic than the cloak-and-dagger saga of the intelligence establishment's quest to keep America's nuclear weapons know-how from falling into the wrong hands?

But two recent books raise unsettling questions about the prowess of the nation's would-be spy catchers and the politicization of the nation's law enforcement establishment.

These two works span the half-century from the discovery that Soviet agents pilfered World War II atom bomb secrets to the recent uproar over fears that China may have stolen the design of a sophisticated U.S. nuclear missile warhead. A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage, by journalists Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman, chronicles the recent prosecutorial fiasco in which government agents-after leaking sensational charges to the press and igniting a congressional firestorm over possible Chinese spying-dropped all but one of the 59 counts they had brought against a Los Alamos National Laboratory computer scientist named Wen Ho Lee. After being jailed without bail for nine months, Lee was released with an unusual public apology from the presiding judge, who declared that the government's handling of the case "embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."

In Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence but Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years, historian Athan Theoharis of Marquette University details how long-entrenched patterns of clandestine-and often unlawful-surveillance, plus a penchant for ideological grandstanding, have chronically interfered with the successful prosecution of espionage cases. He notes, for example, that the FBI's intensive monitoring of suspected Communist activists dating back to the 1930s neither prevented Soviet agents from obtaining A-bomb secrets from the Manhattan Project nor resulted in the prosecution of all those later revealed in decoded communications intercepts to have been involved.

Both books suggest that ambitious government officials sometimes prefer to parlay sensitive findings into sensational headlines or partisan ammunition for the use of ideologically kindred lawmakers. The temptation to do so seems especially strong when the evidence indicating espionage is only circumstantial, or if the evidence cannot be admitted in court because it has been illegally obtained or would compromise intelligence sources.

Thus, as Stober and Hoffman relate, the accusers of Wen Ho Lee found a receptive audience in the press and on Capitol Hill. Lee's prosecution began not with an arrest or an indictment, but with a front-page story in The New York Times based on leaked information. The story, carried beneath a headline declaring "China Stole Nuclear Secrets from Los Alamos, U.S. Officials Say," did not name Lee, but quoted an anonymous source declaring that there was a suspect who "stuck out like a sore thumb." The source added that the suspect was "a Los Alamos computer scientist who is Chinese-American." The Times story appeared on March 6, 1999, and panicky Energy Department officials fired Lee two days later. It took until December of that year, however, for a grand jury to charge him with violations of the Atomic Energy Act and the Espionage Act, the most serious of which were punishable by life imprisonment. By the following September, however, prosecutors meekly allowed Lee to plead guilty to a single minor count of mishandling classified information punishable by the time he already had served. That left The Times to observe several months later, "The case of Wen Ho Lee was a spy story in which the most tantalizing mystery was whether the central character ever was a spy."

During the months that Lee spent in jail-which coincided with the run-up to the 2000 presidential election-critics of the Clinton-Gore administration had a field day. "Republicans were fairly salivating at the chance to prove Clinton had sold nuclear secrets to the Chinese or at least turned a blind eye," Stober and Hoffman observe. On May 25, 2000, a panel led by Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., issued a chilling report casting the People's Republic of China as a dangerous enemy with the newly acquired capability to launch missiles tipped with miniaturized nuclear warheads. "Without the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States, it would have been virtually impossible for the PRC to fabricate and test successfully small nuclear warheads," the report declared.

Stober, a reporter for The Mercury News in San Jose, Calif., and Hoffman, a science writer for the Albuquerque Journal, argue, however, that the Cox panel had no nuclear weapons experts on its staff and overlooked "a wealth of intelligence [that] suggested Chinese weaponeers were quite capable on their own" and had Soviet help in mastering the technology to miniaturize warheads.

Although Wen Ho Lee's name never appeared in the Cox Report, the huge amount of press attention that had been given to his case added flesh and blood to the committee's frightening pronouncements. "He was the prototypical Chinese spy, stealing the secrets with which the PRC might destroy American cities," Stober and Hoffman say.

An irony of the case is that Lee fell under the FBI's suspicion because of his contact with someone who the authorities believe was spying, but whom they never attempted to prosecute despite the much stronger evidence they possessed. In December 1982, Stober and Hoffman recount, Lee phoned a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist named Gwo-Bao Min, whose phone was being secretly tapped by the FBI. Earlier, a U.S. intelligence agent in China had fingered Min, and the scientist had subsequently been caught at an airport en route to China carrying sensitive nuclear weapons information. Min, however, was never arrested, in part because of fear that a trial might reveal the identity of the U.S. spy in China.

Theoharis, a scholar who has doggedly fought to gain access to records that former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover hoped would never see the light of day, attempts to answer the nagging question of why FBI officials, despite their intense monitoring of Soviet and Communist activities during the 1930s and 1940s, "failed to uncover Soviet agents and their American contacts, or develop admissible evidence for their prosecution."

He, too, cites an important case involving a Los Alamos scientist suspected of betraying nuclear weapons secrets. In 1950, after U.S. intelligence agents figured out how to decipher coded Soviet consular cables that they had been intercepting for nearly a decade-the so-called "Venona messages"-they learned that the Russians had received critical classified information from a brilliant young physicist working for the Manhattan Project named Theodore Alvin Hall.

The discovery of Hall's role coincided with the charges of nuclear espionage famously lodged against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Anti-Communist sentiment was at a fever pitch in the early 1950s, and the Rosenbergs soon were heading to the electric chair. Although U.S. authorities had Hall dead to rights-the decoded cables mentioned him by name as a contact who, in 1944, had "handed over" an extensive report about the U.S. atom bomb project to a Soviet KGB agent-no attempt was made to indict him. To do so, the intelligence community would have had to disclose the existence of the intercepted Venona cables, something that neither the FBI nor military intelligence officials were willing to do.

Unfortunately for the Rosenbergs, Theoharis points out, "FBI officials did not need to disclose the Venona messages in order to indict and convict" them, because they were able to find other witnesses to testify against them. Although Julius Rosenberg's "culpability-even more so his wife's-appears to have been less than Hall's," the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953. As for Hall, he moved to England in 1962 and enjoyed a long and distinguished academic career before dying of natural causes in 1999.

The authors of both books concede that catching spies is not easy. Theoharis asserts, for example, that the differing outcomes in the Hall and Rosenberg cases "do not suggest FBI incompetence," but instead "illustrate the counterintelligence dilemma: the difficulty of learning about inherently secret and closely safeguarded espionage operations without resorting to intrusive investigative techniques" that frequently forestall prosecution.

Theoharis fleshes out Hoover's role in espionage and the harm it caused: "Hoover, acting on his own, formally authorized FBI bugging and break-in operations in 1942, and in 1940 approved a series of eight mail-opening programs targeting suspected `subversives' and espionage agents." The use of such illicit surveillance procedures, he demonstrates, interfered with the agency's law enforcement mission. In order to indict Communist Party officials for violating the Espionage Act, or for failing to register as Soviet agents, the FBI would have been placed in the "awkward position" of having to disclose its investigative techniques.

Stober and Hoffman also fault the government's behavior. While condemning Wen Ho Lee's unexplained and reckless mishandling of highly classified information, a mishandling that placed "so many of the nation's basic tools of weapons design at such great risk," they nonetheless conclude that his accusers were even more reckless in jumping to the conclusion without proof that Lee had either committed a crime or intended to commit one. "The FBI scrutinized Lee for more than five years," they write. "They studied Lee's mail, his phone calls, even his garbage, not to mention a quantity of data files equal to a fourth of the Library of Congress. They spent hours interviewing him, including 10 full days of sworn debriefings. They cobbled together a case of suspicious circumstances. But they never found evidence of espionage."

Both books sound well-reasoned alarms about the damage that can occur when spy catchers themselves try to overcome the difficulties and frustrations of their trade by cutting corners or breaking laws.

Theoharis asserts that Hoover's anti-Communist fervor led to the development of "a culture of lawlessness" within his agency. "The motivations of FBI officials may have been sincerely patriotic, based on their own political views of the nation's security interests," he writes. But, he concludes, "their decisions to leak information to ideologically supportive members of Congress and journalists nonetheless damaged a democratic system of limited government."

Because of Hoover's broader political agenda to discredit the American Left, Theoharis contends that the FBI's "counterintelligence investigations never focused solely, or even primarily, on suspected spies." Instead, agency records reveal that "their principal objective was to determine how Communists might influence government policy, labor organizations, and strike activities, movements for racial equality or social change, higher education, and the media (newspapers, movies, and books)."

Stober and Hoffman describe the firestorm over Wen Ho Lee as "an ugly chapter" in U.S. history. "It was a time when democratic ideals were forgotten in the name of national security, when ideology and ambition overpowered objectivity, and when partisan warfare trumped statesmanship." The authors rest their case with a quote from Sig Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos laboratory, who says of Lee: "The way he was hung in public and the way he was jailed was really un-American."

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A Public Education

Dick Kirschten — Sat, 01 Dec 2001 00:00:00 -0500

As I turn to other writing pursuits, I'd like to express my gratitude to the remarkably diverse cast of characters that has contributed to my education in settings ranging from the hills of Appalachia and the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta to the marbled halls of Congress and the richly appointed interior of the Oval Office.

In light of September's attacks, it seems fitting that my first tutors in the ways of public service were the police officers and firefighters I met while assigned to the "police beat." Observing them, I learned the meaning of hazardous duty and the grim confrontation of death-things my peacetime military service had spared me.

A session of the Kentucky state legislature that I covered in 1963 provided me with a crash course about how representative democracy actually works. In the process I learned that urban sophistication and political effectiveness are not synonymous.I saw rural lawmakers with such country bumpkin nicknames as "Jigs," "Oz" and "Double O" shrewdly outmaneuver their big-city counterparts in contests over the allocation of revenues to pave highways, pay school teachers and fuel the rapid expansion of the state's university system.

A few years later, as a reporter in Chicago covering health and environmental issues, I learned that the old-fashioned urban political machine of legendary Mayor Richard J. Daley was not the anachronistic dinosaur that many thought. In response to concerns about air and water pollution, Daley's aides used the most modern technologies to assess threats to public health. I also, however, witnessed the brute force of Daley's police force as it routed anti-war protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Shortly afterwards, while on a temporary assignment to Washington, I saw close up how Congress works. I covered a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee-hastily scheduled to generate publicity in advance of the November elections-to investigate allegations that the Chicago demonstrations had been financed by subversives. One of the targets was a prominent Chicago physician-a news source of mine-who a few years later was deemed sufficiently patriotic by Chicago's political establishment to be named medical director of the problem-plagued Cook County Hospital.

As a staff aide on Capitol Hill for a few years in the 1970s, I learned just how hard people inside government work to influence the news that gets into print. Thereafter, I was much more sensitive to the reality that there is usually much more to a story than the version offered by a single source. By the time I became a White House reporter in 1980, "spinning" the news had become such an art form that members of the press wrote frequent stories about the process, even as we were being "spun."

A number of reporting trips during the 1990s offered a refreshing change of pace from the Washington scene, where so much emphasis is placed on personal celebrity, partisan gamesmanship and, of course, political fund raising. I was privileged during this period to meet some remarkable public servants who were committed to solving problems and delivering needed services. One was a career federal manager on leave to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in the rural highlands of Guatemala. Another was the earnest young mayor of Dresden, Germany, trying to cope with the woes of a city still scarred by World War II and decades of economic stagnation under communist rule. My interest in the impact of surging immigration took me to such urban melting pots as Chicago, Houston, New York, Los Angeles and Miami, and to agricultural hamlets in Arkansas, California, Delaware and Texas. In each place I encountered public officials of good will, some of them immigrants themselves, all of them working to resolve complex legal, cultural and economic conflicts.

I discovered a lot during my years in journalism, (although, alas, not how to pick a Kentucky Derby winner). I came to realize that government often responds best-and gets the most credit-in times of major crisis, as in its current efforts to curb terrorism. More importantly, I learned to respect the spirit and dedication of the public servants whose day-in, day-out efforts to improve our lives and our communities go mostly unnoticed or are taken for granted. But best of all was the opportunity to share in the good humor and cheer of so many individuals who so clearly enjoyed doing what they do.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

Mission Impossible

Dick Kirschten — Thu, 01 Nov 2001 00:00:00 -0500

From the standpoint of its practitioners, the business of politics has never been healthier - or more lucrative.

s Washington concentrates its attention on the political imperative of dealing forcefully with global terrorists who denounce the American way of life, many other issues quite naturally take lesser priority. Somewhat ironically, two of the issues most likely to be set aside are efforts to shore up the credibility of the American political system that is under attack.

Even before September's devastating attacks, Congress showed little interest in acting promptly on either proposed campaign fund-raising reforms or repairs to the nation's electoral machinery. Campaign finance reform legislation, though passed by the Senate, is on indefinite hold in the House. And in July, when a blue-ribbon panel headed by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford recommended that we overhaul our voting system, the silence was deafening.

Even in the face of evidence that disturbingly large numbers of potential voters are turned off by the political process, there are few signs that a political consensus to change things will develop anytime soon.

Things are clearly amiss. The privilege of the vote hardly seems sacred if nearly as many citizens don't vote as do. Notwithstanding record spending by both presidential campaigns last year, barely half (50.7 percent) of eligible voters bothered to vote in the highly competitive contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, a scant improvement over the 49 percent turnout for the less exciting Bill Clinton versus Bob Dole matchup in 1996, according to Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

The notion that "every vote counts" has been badly tarnished by the post- mortems of the 2000 election, both in Florida and elsewhere, that reveal widespread deficiencies in ballots, equipment and voter registration records. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report that as many as 6 million ballots were uncounted in last year's incredibly close presidential election, which was decided by a margin of just four votes in the Electoral College after a critical ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The government that results from such low turnouts and apparently flawed elections hardly seems to meet the standard of being "of the people, by the people and for the people" that President Lincoln stated so eloquently a century and a half ago in his Gettysburg address. Nor does it help to advance the notion that democratic elections express the will of the electorate when the occupant of the White House won a half million fewer votes than his principal opponent.

But from the standpoint of its practitioners, the business of politics has never been healthier-or more lucrative. Both the Republican and Democratic parties reported in August that they expect to harvest record amounts of cash to spend on next year's congressional races. And, not surprisingly, reluctance exists on both sides of the aisle in Congress to tighten the so-called "soft money" loophole that makes it possible to raise huge sums for both parties without exceeding the limits that apply to gifts made directly to candidates. If our electoral system has been knocked off the rails, it hasn't happened by accident, says Alex Keyssar, author of The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, (Basic Books, 1997). It has deliberately been altered by a class of full-time professionals that includes not just those who run for political office, but the consultants and fund-raisers who assist them and the political journalists who gain status and attract audiences by covering their stories.

Accordingly, notes Keyssar, state and county officials are reluctant to cede control over their local election machinery, and Congress does not appear eager to come up with the funds-estimated at $1 billion to $2 billion-that the Carter-Ford commission estimates is needed to modernize antiquated voting equipment.

"As political professionals learned long ago, an electorate that is predictable in size and composition is generally far preferable to large turnouts and mass participation," says Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "The two major parties are in the business of winning elections rather than promoting democracy, and elections can be won by disenfranchising opponents, making it procedurally difficult for them to vote or not counting their vote at all," he adds. Getting politicians to reform a system that generally works to their benefit was never going to be easy. Now, with the public's concern focused on the life-and-death issues of countering a formidable threat from foreign forces, domestic political reforms can safely be assigned to the back burner. But if he were speaking at Gettysburg today, a disillusioned Lincoln would have to refer to a government of, for and by the political professionals.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

Washington at War

Dick Kirschten — Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 -0400

The response to the terrorist assaults of Sept. 11, which crumpled the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center and scorched a deep scar into the mighty Pentagon, however, requires another sort of mobilization. The war to be waged now is against an elusive, stateless enemy who fights by clandestine means and who employs agents, as we now know, who may be living and training within our own borders.

This time, accordingly, the capital will see no rush of new construction-other than what's needed to close the charred gash in the Pentagon. There will be no need to house massive new organizations to coordinate crash programs to manufacture the ships and aircraft and tanks needed to wage conventional warfare. Washington now must primarily mobilize to expand and improve its domestic and overseas intelligence and beef up internal security to protect potential targets-military and civilian. Much of the new war effort, as Vice President Dick Cheney has noted, will take place "in the shadows" and be carried out "quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies."

The physical appearance of the nation's capital may not change markedly during the months-and, in all probability, years-it takes to wage this new war, but the focus and role of government and of George W. Bush's presidency already have fundamentally shifted. Talk of reducing the size of government and the national debt has given way to requests for big increases in spending for defense and intelligence and call-ups of reserves. Bickering over whether to dip into the Social Security trust fund has ceased. And an administration that once seemed indifferent to the views of other governments is now urgently seeking to build international alliances to battle terrorist threats around the globe.

Perhaps most significant is the shift in the often ambivalent attitudes that Americans express about those who work in the public sector. The televised images of heroic rescue efforts being carried out by police, fire and emergency medical personnel have renewed the country's appreciation of-and gratitude for-those who not only devote their lives to public service but sometimes give their lives, as well.

A new recognition has emerged that the role of government must now loom larger in our lives as more stringent police powers are invoked to try to foil terrorist plots and attacks, not just abroad, but here on American soil. Immigration controls are sure to be tightened, and the shocking use of hijacked civilian airliners as deadly missiles puts our entire air travel system, from airport security to air traffic control, in an entirely different context. It may well call into question proposals to achieve cost savings by assigning such functions to private contractors.

Americans also now recognize-as federal employees have realized for some time now-that those who work for our government bear the burden of being symbolic targets for the wrath of domestic and foreign terrorists who challenge our nation's systems and its values. The names of the public servants who lost their lives at the Pentagon and in New York City on Sept. 11 must be added to an honor roll of victims of terrorist attacks that, sadly, is all too long. Many of the casualties have been absorbed by the military: the Marines killed in the October 1983 bombing of their barracks in Lebanon, the Air Force personnel who died in the June 1996 Khobar Towers explosion in Saudi Arabia, and the sailors of the USS Cole attacked last October in Yemen. Civilian government workers bore the brunt of the April 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building-carried out by home-grown terrorist Timothy McVeigh-and the August 1998 explosions at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

As it always does when Washington goes to war, the public has closed ranks behind its government. Bush's approval rating soared in the wake of his declaration of all-out war against the amorphous terrorist networks responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and against all those who lend support or shelter to them. In the face of what is likely to be a long and difficult war with no guarantee of immediate or clearly recognizable victories, the test for the President will be to maintain the support he now has.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

Business As Usual

Dick Kirschten — Sat, 01 Sep 2001 00:00:00 -0400

New administrations frequently take office pledging to make good on bold promises to change the way that things are done in Washington. Earnest attempts are promptly mounted to achieve reforms that many critics regard as badly needed and long overdue. Often, those early initiatives prove politically disastrous. President Carter never recovered from the congressional ill will that resulted from his bold-and ultimately futile-assault on major water projects that he regarded as economically and environmentally unsound. President Clinton also got off on the wrong foot with a major policy failure that alienated congressional leaders. That was the sweeping effort led by his wife, Hillary, to devise a system of universal health insurance coverage.

The current administration of George W. Bush has also absorbed a stunning early defeat. Its failure to accommodate the concerns of Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords, who responded by defecting from the Republican Party, shifted control of the Senate to the Democratic opposition.

More recently, however, the Bush administration has demonstrated a more sure-footed and savvy recognition of how and how not to try to get your way in Washington. A telling case is the Office of Management and Budget's attempt to curb excesses in "pork barrel" spending on Capitol Hill.

In early July, aggrieved lawmakers complained loudly in the press that OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. was waging a jihad against congressional "earmarks"-the special provisions that influential members of Congress tack on to appropriations bills to fund favorite home-state or home-district projects that don't have the administration's blessing.

"They're sort of a natural, traditional part of the process, but it's gotten out of hand," Daniels asserted in the Washington Post. He buttressed his argument with figures compiled by congressional staffers indicating that 18,898 earmarked projects bearing a cumulative price tag of $279 billion were included in the appropriations bills then working their way through the appropriations process. Just five days later, however, Daniels' jihad appeared to be over. The OMB director diplomatically declared that in order to maintain good working relations with Congress, the Bush administration would accept a certain amount of pork as long as overall budget targets were not breached.

"It may not be good government," Daniels explained, "but if they do it within the totals we have agreed on, it's an acceptable cost of doing business. I wouldn't recommend a veto on earmarking alone."

The administration's ready acknowledgment of the "acceptable cost of doing business" should come as no surprise. Despite repeated protestations along the campaign trail that he was running as an outsider from Texas, Bush has recruited a governing team composed mostly of insiders, of people who know very well how the Washington game is played because they have played it before.

A National Journal survey of 300 top Bush appointees-including nominees awaiting confirmation-revealed that more than half are coming directly from jobs within the Beltway and fully 43 percent worked in the administration of Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. Thirty-one percent, including OMB's Daniels, are veterans of the Reagan administration.While it's true that a half-dozen of Bush's closest White House advisers-Counselor Karen R. Hughes, Senior Adviser Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff Clay Johnson, Counsel Alberto R. Gonzalez, Cabinet Secretary Albert Hawkins and Staff Secretary Harriet Miers-are loyalists from his days in the governor's office in Austin, this is hardly an administration that speaks with a Texas accent.

The President's fondness for cowboy boots and frequent trips to his ranch notwithstanding, National Journal observed that "the current administration looks more like a restoration of the Republican government in waiting than a sagebrush rebellion."

Like most GOP administrations, however, it does speak the language of commerce. Nearly two-fifths of Bush's top appointees have worked as business executives and one-fifth have experience greasing the gears of government as representatives of Washington-based lobbying, public relations or trade organizations.

More so than most, this is a mature and experienced administration that knows better than to try to take the Capitol by storm. Instead, it can be expected to try to impose its ideology and advance its agenda incrementally through the tried and true techniques of bold pronouncements-such as edicts against pork barrel spending-followed by an eventual willingness to compromise and to incur those "acceptable" costs of doing business. It's not the most orderly or efficient process, but it's the way the game of "going along to get along" has long been played in Washington.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor forNational Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

The Best Deal in Town?

Dick Kirschten — Wed, 01 Aug 2001 00:00:00 -0400

The Bush administra-tion believes that many tasks now performed by federal employees can be achieved more efficiently by outsourcing them to private firms. "The objective is not to move jobs from the public sector to the private sector. The objective is to get the taxpayer the best deal," argues Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels. It's normal, of course, for Republicans to sympathize with business-world constituents who contend that "commercial" government functions should be purchased in the marketplace. By the same token, Democrats, who have the support of public employee unions, tend to lean in the opposite direction.

The polarity of views was readily apparent at a June hearing held by a General Accounting Office panel that is trying to sort out which functions the government should reserve for itself. John Satagaj, president of the Small Business Legislative Council, complained that "unfair competition occurs when the government conducts activities in-house, which could be obtained from the private sector." But Gary Storrs, an economist for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, countered that "far from being a universal success, contracting has frequently led to cost overruns, poor performance [and] a loss of government capacity to deliver the services."

Despite the obvious political fault lines, Daniels appears particularly determined to give business greater opportunities to prove that it can do a better job than government in delivering services to the public. Daniels declared at an April conference of federal procurement executives that "the general idea that the business of government is not to provide services, but see to it that [services] are provided, seems self-evident to me."

Accordingly, OMB has initially ordered that roughly 42,500 federal jobs be outsourced to private contractors or subjected to private competition by October 2002. That is the administration's first step in achieving its ultimate goal of putting 425,000 government jobs up for competition.

But conducting the government's business in a more businesslike manner is a lot easier said than done. For starters, there are two sides to the proposition, as stated by Daniels, of getting "the best deal" for the taxpayer. In one sense, taxpayers-like corporate stockholders-stand to benefit if costs can be held down and dividends-in the form of tax reductions-can be paid. But taxpayers also are consumers of government services. They don't want corners cut when it comes to the quality of the services they get in areas as diverse as public safety, national security, health care and retirement benefits.

OMB must try to impose the sort of managerial discipline and efficiency that taxpayers-as government stockholders-demand. But that's only half of the equation. Federal agencies get their marching orders and mission assignments-not to mention their annual appropriations-from members of Congress, who win and keep their jobs by pledging to deliver generous benefits and high-quality services for the taxpaying consumers who vote for them.

Over the years, the thoroughly bipartisan desire on the part of lawmakers to "bring home the bacon" of federal programs and expenditures to their states and districts has resulted in a profusion of agencies with overlapping assignments. Too often, the unofficial "core mission" of federal managers is to cater to the whims of their congressional overseers.

That's why Herbert Jasper, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, pointed out in a May 24 memorandum on contracting for services that simply privatizing a function won't lead to greater efficiency if the function was unnecessary or wasteful in the first place. In fact, it could make things worse. "Contracting for performance of government activities may make it harder to terminate or reorganize them, because the contractors, through their supporters in Congress, become a force for continuing them," Jasper warned.

In other words, if Daniels and OMB are to succeed in their quest to "get the taxpayer the best deal," it will take more than public-private competitions to figure out who can perform existing functions most efficiently and effectively. It also will require a thorough review to identify redundant, outdated or unnecessary activities that need to be eliminated. What will be needed most of all is the cooperation of the lawmakers who tend to jealously guard the programs they have created.

The task is daunting, but Daniels seems well-equipped to take it on. He is nonconfrontational by nature and thoroughly understands how Washington works, having previously held jobs on Capitol Hill and in the Reagan White House. And he's not likely to forget that the bottom line for government, as he puts it, is seeing to it that necessary and legitimate services "are provided."

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

The Newest Branch of Government

Dick Kirschten — Sun, 01 Jul 2001 00:00:00 -0400

But many of these same observers have been wringing their hands in despair over the institutional impediments that have slowed the staffing of Bush's administration. "If history is any guide, it will be nine or 10 months before the new President is firmly in control of the government . . . . Only then can the real work of the administration fully begin," declares the introductory article of a special report on the state of the presidential appointments process published in the spring issue of the Brookings Review.

So what's going on here? Is Bush off to an impressive and commanding start, or is he a helpless chief executive presiding over a government beyond his control? Is he receiving first-rate advice, or, as the Brookings Institution article suggests, is he hampered by an "increasing reluctance" on the part of talented civic and corporate leaders to serve in government?

If the new administration is short on people or competence, it certainly doesn't show in the headlines. Bush delivered his budget on time-along with a sweeping tax reduction package. The administration has presented Congress with detailed legislative proposals in the areas of education, energy and a "patients' bill of rights." The administration has also launched major efforts to redefine defense priorities and study the reform of social security.

But it is equally true that the task of filling the thousands of political posts at Cabinet departments, independent agencies and advisory boards is proceeding at a snail's pace, although not necessarily for the lack of willing applicants. The bipartisan Presidential Appointee Initiative reported that, after four months in office, Bush had been able to fill only 55 of 491 top administration jobs requiring Senate confirmation-or about 11 percent.

Perhaps the best explanation for Bush's ability to score early successes with only a tiny fraction of political loyalists in place is offered by political scientist Nelson W. Polsby of the University of California at Berkeley, who argues that the decades since World War II have seen the rise of a new branch of government: "the presidential branch."

The importance of the presidential branch, according to Polsby, is due not so much to any special role in executive branch management as it is to the opposite-its "separation from the executive branch." It is the presidential branch, he writes, "that sits across the table from the executive branch at budgetary hearings, and that imperfectly attempts to coordinate both the executive and legislative branches on its own behalf."

The growth of the Executive Office of the President, which now includes the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Domestic Policy Council and the National Economic Council "is the big news of the post-war era-indeed of the last half century in American government, though it took time for the presidential branch to grow into its post-war potential," Polsby says.

With a huge assist from Vice President Dick Cheney, a former chief of staff to President Gerald Ford and Secretary of Defense under Bush's father, the President has deftly assumed command of the presidential branch by appointing a small, but tightly knit, team of top White House aides, Cabinet secretaries and Cabinet deputies-the key players on the various White House policy councils. Not surprisingly, nearly all of the core appointees are former colleagues of Cheney's at the Pentagon or the Ford White House.

To further consolidate its power, of course, the Bush administration is eager to place its appointees in assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary slots throughout the Cabinet agencies. As James P. Pfiffner, a George Mason University professor of government and public policy, contends, "the government's ability to carry out its primary functions depends crucially on capable civil servants, whose effectiveness is intimately tied to the quality of the leadership of the executive branch, that is, presidential appointments."

Conversely, it is only through the politically appointed chain of command that the wisdom, experience and insights of career servants can be conveyed to the decision-makers who sit in the White House councils. But for an administration that enters office with a ready-made agenda, the first priority is take firm control of the presidential branch, so as to let the rest of the executive branch know who is the boss. The flaws of the presidential appointments process have not prevented Bush and Cheney from clearly conveying that message.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

The Marketer in Chief

Dick Kirschten — Fri, 01 Jun 2001 00:00:00 -0400

"Oftentimes what I try to say in Washington gets filtered, and sometimes my words don't exactly translate directly to the people. So I've found it's best to travel the country. I'm coming in from Billings, Mont., [where] we had about 12,000 people show up last night to hear . . . about what tax relief means and [what] common sense budgeting will do for our nation."
-President George W. Bush,
Kalamazoo, Mich., March 27, 2001

n April, on the third day of the spy plane impasse with China, the White House sought to cool tensions by projecting a business-as-usual image. For President Bush, that meant going ahead with a previously scheduled trip to the H. Fletcher Brown Boys and Girls Club in Wilmington, Del., where he posed for photos with students working on computers and addressed local dignitaries about education and faith-based service programs.

Similarly, when word came that the crew of the spy plane was heading home after being held in China for 11 days, the commander in chief was traveling in North Carolina to pitch his educational policies at a middle school in Charlotte and at East Carolina University in Greenville.

As those incidents suggest, managing the nation's business while away from the White House has become standard procedure for a modern President. Indeed, during Bush's first 100 days in office, he spent roughly 30 days on the road visiting 23 states and two foreign countries. His peripatetic schedule also illustrates the extent to which Presidents increasingly serve as traveling salesmen for their policies, using carefully choreographed photo opportunities and scripted-for-television sound bites.

"If you are campaigning for your tax bill, you don't go across town to talk to Congress, you go to Ashtabula and have an event that gets local media attention" as well as coverage by the traveling White House press corps, says Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution scholar and an aide in the Eisenhower and Nixon White Houses. Hess, in an interview with Government Executive, said it is inconceivable that his former bosses would have acceded to demands by their schedulers that they make frequent trips to sit down with grade schoolers and other photogenic audiences to build support for their policy proposals.

The art of presidential communications has changed dramatically since the days when Franklin Roosevelt pioneered the political use of radio with his "fireside chats." Convinced that the medium would have greater impact if used only sparingly, Roosevelt limited himself to just four radio chats in his first year in office and then cut back to two a year until World War II broke out.

Before television networks began to insist that the White House serve as a daily backdrop for national news stories, many important issues were dealt with and explained to the public by the agencies responsible for them. "When I came into the White House under Eisenhower, probably only two or three things a year were really 'presidentialized,'" Hess recalls. "If it was an agricultural bill, for example, it was handled at the Department of Agriculture by [Secretary] Ezra Taft Benson."

But television has not just influenced where news stories about the government are reported, it has influenced how they are reported. In The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, (American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Brookings Institution, 2000), Hess writes that, by the early 1980s, "Presidents framed their legislative initiatives, and journalists framed their coverage, in campaign terms and used the same tools and techniques that they had been perfecting since the late 1960s. . . . An immensely complicated issue was often reduced in the press to an exposition of competing strategies."

As television became the dominant press medium and all-news channels clamored to be fed around the clock, the White House adjusted to different demands-and opportunities. The casting of the President as television celebrity and "marketer in chief" of his administration's agenda began in earnest with Ronald Reagan and was perfected by Bill Clinton.

"A lot of it owes to the genius of Mike Deaver, who thought in visual terms" when staging White House pronouncements, and who advocated strict adherence to a chosen "line of the day," Hess says, referring to the public relations guru who served as Reagan's deputy chief of staff. Bush's advisers have "learned from Reagan and Deaver that if it's Week 1, it must be education reform, if it's Week 2, it must be faith-based organizations, and so forth," he explains. Hess says the concept of the President as a traveling salesman "disturbs me in lots of ways because you'd like to think you are paying the President to mind the store."

But he also gives Bush credit for using "the tools at hand in our media-drenched society."

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

Faith, Funds and Performance

Dick Kirschten — Tue, 01 May 2001 00:00:00 -0400

"In many instances, the faith-based services are working, and they are cheaper than their government counterparts," asserts Abigail L. Kuzma, a former Senate Republican aide who now directs the Indianapolis-based Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic. Stephen Goldsmith, who as mayor of Indianapolis pioneered partnerships with religious groups, insists that "church-based groups are infinitely better-suited than government to help vulnerable individuals." Goldsmith, who has been tapped by President Bush to oversee the AmeriCorps national service program, says "government is typically unable to discriminate between the truly needy and those simply seeking a handout."

Nonetheless, John J. DiIulio Jr., the outspoken University of Pennsylvania professor who heads Bush's faith-based initiatives office, finds himself enveloped in controversy. From both the left and the right, concerns have been raised about possible breaches in the traditional wall between church and state. Will religious missions be diluted by intrusive federal regulation, or will public funds for secular services be diverted to sectarian purposes? Will some faiths be rewarded with increased public money at the expense of others? What will happen to eligible recipients whose religious beliefs differ from those of the organization chosen to dispense benefits?

DiIulio says it will be government's challenge to determine which programs deliver the most bang for the buck, even if that means devising new yardsticks to measure such success rates as how long clients of a faith-based rehabilitation program stay off drugs. "It's got to be about facts, not faith; performance, not politics; and results, not religion," he has said repeatedly during a series of meetings with leaders representing various religious sects and charities. DiIulio, who has been no stranger to criticism during his career, insists the initiative must "respect civic pluralism [even] if that means that no one individual or set of individuals is going to be entirely happy."

Kuzma, former counsel to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, and legislative assistant to Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., agrees that evaluation is key. "I think it would be a mistake to be more lenient for faith-based programs than others," she says. "Whatever the program is, it should be able to demonstrate that it is effective." But she adds that government evaluators should concern themselves only with the quality of the legal services provided by her agency (which receives state funds) and should not conclude that "somehow it is wrong for a program to have Christian content."

Kuzma says she sometimes prays with her clients and conducts educational outreach programs at a "Christian cafe, where the proprietress has Bibles sitting there" for those who wish to use them. But Kuzma insists that participation in prayer is voluntary and points out that other sources of low-income legal assistance are available in Indianapolis. "It is not a case of ramming something down anybody's throat," she says, adding that program evaluators should not "come in and say we want you to take all the crosses off the wall, or not speak about Christ at all or play Christian music."

Many major religiously affiliated organizations long have been recipients of federal funds, operating under rules that satisfy court interpretations of the First Amendment's prohibition against "establishment of religion" by the state. Diana Aviv, director of the Washington office of United Jewish Communities, describes her organization as "a faith-based institution providing nonsectarian services." As such, she adds, it provides "from-cradle-to-grave social services that receive federal funding." The Rev. Fred Kammer, president of Catholic Charities USA, observes that his agency has worked for more than a century in "active concert with local, state and federal governments, which contract with us for specific services to people of all faiths and none."

But J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee, warns that the "charitable choice" provisions of the 1996 welfare reform law and other recent statutes open the door to direct public funding of churches and the subsequent auditing of church books by government program evaluators. He argues that public funds should be channeled only through separate affiliate organizations in order to maintain "a firewall against government regulation of and entanglement with" religion.

Figuring out how to enforce accountability, while maintaining that "firewall," is the big challenge facing DiIulio as the White House's propagator of faith-based initiatives.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

Revolving door woes

Dick Kirschten — Sun, 01 Apr 2001 00:00:00 -0500

For many, going to work for President Bush meant moving just a few blocks. White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr., for example, moved from the nearby government affairs offices of General Motors Corp., and Bush's liaison to Capitol Hill, Nicholas E. Calio, jumped a like distance from the boutique lobbying firm of O'Brien, Calio. Similarly, defeated Republican Senate candidates Spencer Abraham and John Ashcroft whisked across town to Bush Cabinet posts without missing a paycheck.

Moving in the opposite direction, former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, previously a nine-term Democratic congressman from Kansas, joined the influential Washington law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, which had briefly lent the services of a senior adviser, former Rep. Bill Paxon, R-N.Y., to supervise Bush's departmental transition teams. Another capital powerhouse, the law firm of Covington & Burling, landed outgoing Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat.

Notwithstanding the ease with which the well-connected in Washington switch jobs as election results dictate, there are worries that Bush-and future Presidents-may have trouble recruiting candidates to fill lesser assignments that lack the prestige of a West Wing office or a Cabinet Secretary's title. The problem, many experts say, is that financial disclosure and other requirements, adopted in the name of ethics reform, have become unnecessarily onerous.

The news media's appetite for detecting scandal is another turn-off. "Because of so many stories, proven or unproven, we've come to think that people who enter government service are knaves or fools, or proably both" lamented Lloyd N. Cutler, counsel to two Democratic presidents. And, with so many jobs now requiring Senate confirmation, it is all but impossible to properly vet all the candidates, Cutler said during a recent panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

Cutler, who recalls that he once wrote an article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled "Two Cheers for the Revolving Door," stresses the value to a President of having experienced advisers armed with knowledge gained during past tours of government service. "We have people who have gone through two, three and four reiterations, rising higher and higher in the political hierarchy, who have never done anything that anyone has called into question," Cutler says.

C. Boyden Gray, counsel to the first President Bush and now a law partner of Cutler's, opines that shifting back and forth between the public and private sectors is becoming more difficult. He complains, in particular, that accusations of ethics violations have become "the weapon of choice" in Washington's infighting, with unsubstantiated charges "played out in the newspapers in a most unfair way." Gray argues that financial disclosure rules are unduly invasive, citing instances in which acquaintances have turned down government service to avoid notoriety about their wealth.

But a top White House ethics cop, Associate Presidential Counsel Robert "Moose" Cobb, insists that the hurdles can be surmounted. "If a person wants to come in, we are going to be able to work it out," Cobb argues, citing his experiences over the past nine years as a career attorney with the Office of Government Ethics. "I have never seen a candidate, or a nominee, for a position excluded by virtue of any financial attachment he or she brought to the table," Cobb says.

Government Ethics Director Amy L. Comstock recalls only one time that a financial conflict could not be resolved, but quickly adds that the medicine is sometimes painful. When a case is resolved at great financial loss to a candidate, she says, "you've got [an] unhappy customer there-and with good reason."

A forthcoming Office of Government Ethics report to Congress will suggest reforms intended, among other things, to guard against the inappropriate use of ethics rules and to update financial divestiture requirements to take into account compensation schemes that include stock options. Comstock expressed hope that the recommendations would not be seen as backpedaling on ethics rules.

But American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein, who is spearheading a project to break down barriers to good governance, warns that it will be difficult to overcome the culture of cynicism that pervades Washington. "Anytime we move to make a change," he says, "there will be a cacophony out there saying, 'this is an outrage.'"

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The ”A” word is in

Dick Kirschten — Thu, 01 Mar 2001 00:00:00 -0500

The "A" word-"accountability"-is a favorite in President Bush's vocabulary. resident George W. Bush wants the federal government to stop being a "nanny" who tells people exactly how to do things and focus its attention instead on results. The "A" word-"accountability"-is a favorite in the new President's vocabulary and key to his philosophy of giving others the freedom and flexibility to find the best solutions to vexing problems.

In his uncharacteristically eloquent inaugural address, Bush mentioned responsibility five times as he urged Americans to "seek a common good beyond your comfort" and to embrace ideals that "lift us above our interests." He exhorted people to get involved as "responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character."

Bush's vision of unleashing well-intentioned citizens and corporations to further the greater good is attractive. And his use of the bully pulpit to encourage such behavior has been widely praised. After all, no organized constituencies advocate failure or poor results.

As President, Bush's challenge is to help make that vision a reality. "Government has great responsibilities for public safety and public health, for civil rights and common schools," he acknowledged in his speech. And he has made it clear that he expects those who work in his administration to help fulfill those obligations.

In describing his role, Bush earlier this year declared "a good executive is one that understands how to recruit people and how to delegate, how to align authority and responsibility, how to hold people accountable for results and how to build a team of people."

Bush's team clearly gets the message. Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. stressed during his confirmation hearing that he intends to "capitalize the M in OMB" and to shift his agency's emphasis to "an insistence on output" and away from "a mentality in which progress is measured in dol- lars of input." And Secretary of Education Rod Paige, in promoting the administration's education initiative, declared: "When we set high standards for our schools and our children, and when we give our schools and our children the support they need and hold them accountable for results, public education can get the job done."

As a former governor, Bush also will enthusiastically delegate to state governments greater authority to administer federal programs, notes American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research scholar Robert W. Hahn. "States will be offered freedom from regulation, but will be held accountable for results," he explains.

There is, of course, nothing novel about focusing on results. In 1993, President Clinton launched his government reinvention initiative with the admonition that federal managers should put "a premium on speed and function and service, not rules and regulations." And the Government Performance and Results Act, enacted the same year, requires federal agencies-and their congressional overseers-to establish results-oriented criteria to evaluate program performance.

Sharing responsibility-whether with other levels of government, private contractors or "faith-based" organizations-is not new either. Devolution of power to states and localities was a rallying cry of the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration aggressively promoted volunteerism through a "thousand points of light" initiative.

The critical test for the younger Bush will be to honor his pledge to hold people accountable when things do not go well. As more responsibility devolves to other levels of government and to the private sector, government managers will have less direct control over program outcomes. Bush also will need to establish himself in the public's eye as a commander-in-chief who is calling the shots, rather than simply deferring to the judgments of experienced senior aides, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield.

As governor of Texas, Bush boasted of improvements in student achievement, but critics question the validity of the testing criteria. Doubt also surrounds his policy of cooperating with industry to reduce air pollution. Four of the state's major metropolitan areas-Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston-Galveston, Beaumont-Port Arthur and El Paso-do not meet federal air quality standards.

And, according to The New York Times, little evidence exists to suggest that Bush was a taskmaster who cracked down on subordinates who failed to make proper use of delegated powers. In six years, Bush demanded the resignation of only one of his appointees, The Times reported.

In the White House, the stakes for Bush-and the nation-are higher. His goals of assuring the solvency of Social Security and Medicare and "sparing our children from struggles we have the power to prevent" matter to a lot of people. If acceptable results are not achieved, it is Bush who will be held accountable.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com. ]]>

An Uncommon Challenge

Dick Kirschten — Thu, 01 Feb 2001 00:00:00 -0500

The symbolism of Bush's early actions matched the gracious rhetoric of his delayed victory speech, in which he declared that he "was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation." By conspicuously filling key positions with women, African-Americans and Latinos, he extended an olive branch to major voting blocs that he failed to carry in November's election. (Exit polls indicated that Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore prevailed among women by 55 percent to 42 percent, among blacks by 90 percent to 9 percent and among Hispanics by 62 percent to 35 percent.) Despite these divides, Americans in many ways are culturally more homogeneous than ever thanks to the pervasive influences of new communications technologies, mass entertainment and news media conglomerates. Nonetheless, some scholars believe the nation is fracturing along multiple demographic fault lines.

One such expert, University of Michigan demographer William H. Frey, sees an America that has been Balkanized into four distinct geopolitical subdivisions that have differing expectations of the federal government. Viewed from Frey's perspective, Bush must find ways to please distinctly different electorates as he seeks to consolidate his standing as the leader of a single nation and shore up his political base for 2004. Bush has the most work to do in what Frey refers to as Melting Pot America. This noncontiguous political enclave, which includes California, Florida, Hawaii, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and the District of Columbia, accounts for 32 percent of the votes in the electoral college. Since 1990, the voting-age populations of these jurisdictions have swelled dramatically with the influx of immigrant minorities, primarily of Hispanic and Asian heritage.

Although Bush won handsomely in his home state of Texas and eked out a disputed victory in Florida, Melting Pot America voted strongly Democratic in November. Gore ended up with 113 of the region's electoral votes to Bush's 57, and 11 of the 14 senators from these states are Democrats.

To win more support from the fast-growing blocs of immigrant voters in large urban areas, Frey suggests that Bush and his administration will need to be sensitive to the problems of congested metropolises (declining public school systems, for example). Also important, he adds, will be the government's treatment of noncitizens who are not yet voters. Bush also fared poorly in the 25 states stretching from New England across the Midwest to the Great Plains that Frey categorizes as "slow growth/decliners." The voting population in these states is growing only modestly and is increasingly made up of citizens who are "older, middle-income and white," the University of Michigan demographer notes. Gore won the battle for electoral votes in this region 135 to 95. And Democrats now control 29 of the region's 50 seats in the Senate.

Although the electoral clout of this region will decline because of the loss of nine congressional seats resulting from the reapportionment based on the 2000 census, Bush can ill afford to disregard the concerns of so large an area. The solvency of the Social Security and Medicare systems and the problems of rural America take precedence in this slow-growth region, Frey notes.

An area that holds great political pro-mise for Bush is the "New West," a block of 10 states gaining population that Frey describes as "mostly white." This category encompasses the Rocky Mountain states, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. To a large degree, this region's growth is being fueled by an exodus from California. Frey notes that these are "nostalgic white suburbanites" seeking a more traditional lifestyle that is no longer available in the cosmopolitan melting pot.

The "New West" accounts for 15 of the 50 Republican seats in the Senate and provided Bush with 38 electoral votes to Gore's 18. Unlike older residents, the newcomers to this region tend to be more socially liberal on issues such as gun control, Frey observes.

By far the strongest region for both Bush and the Republican Party is the "New South"-defined by Frey as including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Bush swept all 81 of this region's electoral votes and Republicans hold 11 of its 16 Senate seats.

It is not a region, however, that Bush can take for granted. The area's population gains are being driven by the significant migration of blacks and white retirees from northern states. As a result, predicts Frey, the New South is becoming "a distinct but more liberal region than in the past."

Against this backdrop, and at a moment when the nation-and Congress-are evenly split along partisan lines, Bush faces an uncommon challenge in his quest to reduce rancor and forge common ground.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal ]]>

A System Under Stress

Dick Kirschten — Mon, 01 Jan 2001 00:00:00 -0500

First, there was the disconcerting prospect of having the candidate with the most votes end up the loser. While Democrat Al Gore held a clear if narrow lead in the nationwide balloting, the all-important arithmetic of the electoral college appeared to favor Republican George W. Bush. Next, there was the extremely tenuous nature of Bush's razor-thin margin in the pivotal state of Florida, whose 25 electoral votes would determine the winner of the presidency. And finally, there was the numbing realization that the final resolution rested upon the outcome of a welter of acrimonious lawsuits.

As the television cameras and the lawyers focused on Florida, a dismaying tide of allegations suggested that the vote-counting process in several critical counties was fraught with error. Advocates for Gore raced to state courts to seek more time for manual ballot inspections that they thought might put their man ahead. Barristers for Bush, not surprisingly, fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to finalize the counting while their man still held the lead.

The low turnout and indecisive result, followed by inflammatory public relations tactics, hardball legal maneuvers by partisans on both sides and the threat of intervention by the Florida legislature, did not offer up a very pretty picture. When all the arguments over dimpled chads and missing postmarks have ended, Americans will long ponder the unsettling message that every vote really does count, but not every vote is necessarily counted.

Preparations for a new administration were complicated. Federal funds and office space for presidential transition activities were denied to either candidate until the Florida-spawned litigation had run its course. In the meantime, Republicans and Democrats sparred in Washington over how to divide power in a Senate in which each political party might hold exactly 50 seats.

But when the new President takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, Americans-some more grudgingly than others-can be expected to close ranks behind him and urge Washington to get on with the nation's business. If the truncated transition process has delayed the installation of a full team of political appointees, executives of the career civil service may have to fill in on an acting basis wherever needed.

Despite all of the doomsday talk of a humbled President who lacks a popular mandate, and of continued gridlock in a narrowly divided Congress, it's important to remember that the government, like a great ocean liner, is slow to lose speed or drastically change course. The civil servants who administer government programs at all levels provide ballast that helps keep the ship of state on an even keel.

"The bureaucracy is grounded in notions of stability, continuity and regularity, without which a nation of laws becomes one merely of capricious power-holders," wrote political scientists Joel D. Aberbach and Bert A. Rockman in a study the Brookings Institution published last year. The bureaucracy shifts eventually "to reflect changing political tastes and preferences," they note, but seldom as quickly as political overseers desire.

While election victories-narrow or wide-shift policy decisions in favor of one philosophical viewpoint or another, the essential function of government-and the real genius of our multi-layered, multi-branched system-is to enable balances to be struck between competing legitimate interests. It is a continuing process in which even those who perceive themselves as losers can seek remedy or recourse somewhere in the system.

As a journalist covering federal affairs since the waning days of the Ford administration, I've become acutely aware that government's effort to reconcile differences tends to be an ongoing and open-ended process. Policy disputes are seldom permanently resolved, but instead recur again and again in one form or another.

My first Washington reporting assignment in 1976, for example, involved a controversy over federal efforts to curb water pollution by requiring permits that regulated the dredging and filling of wetlands. In response to complaints that farmers would be harmed, however, lands in agricultural use were exempted from the requirement.

Four presidencies later, farmers are up in arms over a federal clean water proposal requiring that they obtain permits for the discharge of manure and other livestock wastes. A relatively obscure news report recently noted that state officials in Michigan were fighting Washington over the new rules because they feared some farmers would be put out of business. In the midst of the partisan turmoil over November's election, that news story was a welcome reminder of government's role in the crucial effort to strike balances between differing national interests. That healthy jockeying will continue no matter how stressful and chaotic the political warfare that may rage from time to time.

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Audition Time

Dick Kirschten — Fri, 01 Dec 2000 00:00:00 -0500

Indeed, the virtual dead heat between Texas Gov. George Bush and Vice President Al Gore in the pivotal state of Florida was still being sorted out by a recount when this issue of Government Executive went to press. Although there is never a shortage of candidates eager to fill prestigious government posts in any new administration, the absence of a clear popular mandate for the incoming administration may temper the customary enthusiasm that surrounds the quest for Cabinet posts and other key positions. The prospect of working with a Congress closely divided along party lines is also sobering.

Even when a President roars into office with a substantial margin of victory, the new chief executive faces serious obstacles in recruiting talented aides and advisers. Many experts now believe that these impediments have become unduly severe.

Despite recent talk of downsizing government, the number of political posts has grown. Some 6,000 presidential appointments are on the slate, including roughly 600 that require Senate confirmation.

Recent administrations have struggled-and frequently failed-to position all their players in a timely fashion or to properly screen them. Often, the process is sabotaged by partisan foes in the Senate or inflammatory news coverage by a media eager to exploit the slightest whiff of conflict or scandal. Even under the best of circumstances, political appointments involve an obstacle course of time-consuming and duplicative reporting requirements and investigations that seem designed to disparage and humiliate those who submit to them.

A bipartisan task force gathered by the Twentieth Century Fund (now the Century Foundation) found in 1996 that "many talented and honorable candidates for office decide against serving because of the intrusiveness of the process." According to Colby College Professor G. Calvin Mackenzie, a participant in the study, "in our zeal to produce a government that is scandal-proof and error-proof, we have created a recruiting process that is counterproductive to national needs."

Earlier this year, the Brookings Institution's Presidential Appointee Initiative concluded from a survey of more than 400 senior appointees from the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations that the nomination and confirmation process "exacts a heavy toll," leaving nominees "exhausted, embarrassed and confused." Commenting on the survey, Paul C. Light of Brookings and Virginia L. Thomas of the Heritage Foundation noted that the process favors repeat performances by former government officials rather than newcomers with fresh perspectives. "Presidents know that people from inside the [Capital] Beltway and with prior government experience are the most likely to survive the presidential appointments process," wrote Light and Thomas. "[But] those individuals may not represent the kind of citizen servants the founders hoped would lead the government."

The so-called "confirmation clog" also alarms the American Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein and former Clinton State Department official Thomas Donilon. Writing in the December issue of Foreign Affairs, they say, "finding top-flight people to serve in government for brief periods in their professional lives has always been a challenge. But, in recent years, the challenge has transformed into a nearly insurmountable one, especially for posts below the prestige level of the Cabinet." Ornstein and Donilon cited no "qualitative evidence of a drastic drop-off in the recruitment of America's best and brightest to top public policy positions." But, they noted, "every available bit of anecdotal evidence suggests that the recruitment problem has mushroomed into a recruitment crisis."

A Brookings Institution study this year by political scientists Joel D. Aberbach and Bert A. Rockman, "In the Web of Politics: Three Decades of the U.S. Federal Executive," asserted that the caliber of presidential appointees, when judged by their educational achievements, has slipped. "Where there has been a decline, it is most marked among the politically appointed executives rather than the civil service," they said. Congress acted this year to provide a better orientation for incoming appointees, but deferred the question of simplifying compliance with financial disclosure requirements by asking the Office of Government Ethics to conduct a study. Acknowledging that current requirements impose burdens and create delays, authors of the legislation to reform the process expressed hope that "the current disclosure process can be improved through careful streamlining, coordination and elimination of duplication without lessening the substantive compliance with any conflict of interest requirement."

For the new President, the task of choosing key administration players and quickly getting them into position can be formidable. The difficulty may be compounded by the uncertainty over which party will control the Senate. It's not only the folks auditioning for high-powered positions who are on trial, the presidential appointments system is as well.

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Political World Politician, Heal ThyselfA new study of reform efforts argues that government's shortcomings aren't so much managerial as they are political.

Dick Kirschten — Wed, 01 Nov 2000 00:00:00 -0500

This year's campaign was no exception. Republican George W. Bush pledged "a departure from the old ways of government" while Democrat Al Gore promised changes that would make today's agency practices seem "as outdated and antiquated as government before the telephone." With both political parties apparently on the same wavelength, surely the stage is now set for a major wave of administrative changes that will whip Washington's much maligned civil servants into shape. But wait a minute. A newly published study of executive reform efforts over the past 30 years argues that government's shortcomings aren't so much managerial as they are political.

"If the U.S. system produces complexity, contradiction, bloated or inefficient programs, and unusually high degrees of restriction on managerial latitude, that is primarily the product of politicians, not bureaucrats," conclude political scientists Joel D. Aberbach of the University of California (Los Angeles) and Bert A. Rockman of the University of Pittsburgh in their book, In the Web of Politics: Three Decades of the U.S. Federal Executive (Brookings Institution Press, 2000). Their research painstakingly debunks three major myths about government: o The complaint that surfaced loudly during the Nixon administration that the bureaucracy is insufficiently responsive to its elected overseers. o The concern expressed by the 1989 Volcker Commission that the demoralization of the civil service has adversely affected the quality of its performance.

o The contention of the Clinton administration that the mechanisms of government no longer work properly and must be reinvented. Aberbach and Rockman, who began their study in 1970 and have conducted extensive interviews with hundreds of government executives over the ensuing decades, take issue with all three notions. They conclude that there has been no deterioration in the quality or morale of the civil service, nor any deterioration in its responsiveness to political authority. And they are skeptical about claims that basic governmental priorities can be made more rational simply by "introducing a variety of private sector techniques into public administration, such as making federal agencies more responsive to the preferences of what they call customers."

They agree that better government at a lower cost would be welcome and management reforms can help, but they dispute the premise that the bureaucracy is broken and in desperate need of repair. "Despite the management problems created by complex statutes and mandated procedures, it is not at all clear that the government works poorly from a management point of view, regardless of the hyperbole claiming it does," Aberbach and Rockman assert. "In fact," as they write, "on the whole, it seems to work pretty well, inasmuch as its performance is basically predictable and often lauded by its 'customers,' most of whom think they were treated fairly even by the dreaded Internal Revenue Service." The authors contend that administrative reforms "are almost always oversold as the cure to what ails government." Elected officials often see proposed management improvements as a means of "avoiding responsibility for hard and distasteful policy decisions. A case in point, they argue, is the Clinton administration's "government reinvention" initiative spearheaded by Gore, which "at one level [is] largely political theater-a way to look creative and justify cost constraints in a highly politicized environment."

Aberbach and Rockman caution that there may be pitfalls to the notion that government efficiencies can be achieved by emulating or relying upon the private sector. Challenging the assertions of some reform proponents that "businesses have customer satisfaction as their primary goal," the authors point out that profit is the primary goal of business and that "satisfying customers is a means to that end, but not the end in itself."

The authors also emphasize that privatization will require increased skills in awarding and managing contracts. "The opportunities for scandal or nonperformance of contracts increase with the number of services and goods under contract, particularly if there is inadequate guidance in writing the contracts and if downsizing . . . leaves insufficient personnel to monitor contract performance."

Increased reliance on the marketplace may also invite increased political interference. "Where there is extensive privatization and outsourcing, there will also be intense political struggles over distributive issues and the near certain defense by elected officials of inefficient, even negligent, contractors who are politically influential," the study warns.

In sum, if there is any prescription for curing the ills of government, Aberbach and Rockman argue that it is: Politician, heal thyself.

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Business and Government

Dick Kirschten — Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 -0400

letters@govexec.com

hen Calvin Coolidge declared 75 years ago that "the business of America is business," he could scarcely have dreamed how pervasive the role of corporate money would become in electing future Presidents. This year's White House race will shatter all previous campaign spending records. The vast bulk of the $93 million raised thus far for Republican contender George W. Bush and the $53 million amassed on behalf of his Democratic opponent Al Gore comes from corporations and individuals with corporate ties.

While Gore's campaign war chest includes significant largesse from organized labor and other interests, such as trial lawyers, the bulk of the funds that he and his party have solicited come from business donors. This raises a legitimate question as to how seriously to take his avowal that he is the candidate who will defend the interests of working Americans against the greed of powerful corporations.

Although both campaigns are fueled by corporate cash, the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets offer at least one clear distinction. Voters will get to decide whether experience in business or public office best prepares leaders to strike the proper balance between government support of the private sector and its role in checking corporate excesses that may threaten the common good.

The issue isn't necessarily a matter of partisanship.

At the turn of the previous century, the Republican Party gave birth to the Progressive Movement, which waged war against the corporate trusts and sought to put government on a businesslike footing. The movement attracted strong support from middle-class professionals and managers who believed that government was corrupt and inefficient and needed to adopt the hard-nosed analytical mind-set of the business world.

But biographers of Progressive Movement leader Theodore Roosevelt, the GOP President (1901-1909) who reveled in the role of reformer and who famously demanded that "big business give people a square deal," stress that "T.R." saw government as a crucial player in the fight for social progress. Although born into a wealthy social stratum that frowned upon involvement in politics, Roosevelt eschewed mercantile ambitions and aspired instead to become a member of the governing class.

Over the ensuing century, Presidents of both parties have increasingly tapped corporate sources to help staff their administrations and to bring business insights into their policy-making councils. Sometimes, such forays into public life have caused eyebrows to rise. Charles E. Wilson, the General Motors Corp. president who was to become Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense suggested to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1953 that "what's good for General Motors is good for the country."

If voters have a preference between national leaders with proven skills in the marketplace and those whose interests lie predominantly in the field of governance, this November should provide them a clear opportunity to express it. The Republican ticket of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney offers two candidates who have divided their time between corporate boardrooms and government posts. The Democrats' pairing of Gore and Joseph Lieberman, by contrast, consists of two men who have devoted virtually the entirety of their professional lives to public office.

Before becoming Texas governor in 1995, Bush engaged in private-sector pursuits, starting out in the oil business by founding the firm, Arbusto Energy, which later became Bush Exploration. In 1989, he and a group of fellow investors purchased the Texas Rangers Major League baseball franchise and he became the team's managing general partner. Cheney, while spending the bulk of his career in government, has made his mark in the business world, as well. After serving in several Nixon administration posts, he joined Bradley, Woods & Co., a New York City investment research and securities trading firm. He then returned to Washington and became President Gerald Ford's chief of staff. Cheney next served for 10 years in Congress before becoming Defense Secretary under Bush's father. Most recently he headed the Dallas-based energy services giant, Halliburton Co., whose directors awarded him a $20 million retirement package when he left to become a vice presidential candidate.

Gore, following a brief stint as a newspaper reporter, won election to Congress in 1976 and has been in Washington ever since. After eight years in the House and eight in the Senate, he ran for Vice President in 1992 as Bill Clinton's running mate and was reelected in 1996. Lieberman has practiced law for short periods during a career mostly spent in public office. In Connecticut, he served 10 years in the state Senate, becoming its majority leader, and was the state's attorney general for six years. He came to Washington in 1989 after an upset victory over GOP Sen. Lowell P. Weicker.

Ironically, the careers of Gore and Lieberman more closely match that of pro-business President Calvin Coolidge, a career officeholder, than do the careers of Bush and Cheney.

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Selling Government Short

Dick Kirschten — Fri, 01 Sep 2000 00:00:00 -0400

dkirschten@govexec.com

abor Day, once the formal kickoff date for the fall presidential campaigns, is now just another milestone in a marketing process that provides full-time employment for politicians, pollsters, consultants, fund-raisers and members of the media who write about them.

"For most of American history, campaigns generally were confined to the latter half of election years, and when the campaigning ended, the governing began," write Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, editors of The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press), a forthcoming book by a group of political experts.

Such is not the case with today's White House aspirants. Democratic nominee Al Gore has been running for President since 1987. His Republican opponent, George W. Bush, reportedly began eyeing the Oval Office after his father was defeated for re-election in 1992. And even wild-card, third-party candidates Patrick Buchanan and Ralph Nader have been publicly hawking their disparate ideological wares for decades.

It's no wonder The Washington Post's respected political reporter, David S. Broder, recently churned out a column entitled,"Fighting the Ho-Hum Factor." After a visit to Michigan, Broder reported that voters seemed apathetic despite a long list of vital issues to be resolved on that state's November ballot.

Fall-off in voter participation has reached worrisome levels in recent years. Ornstein and Mann believe that the overemphasis on office-seeking-and perhaps the overexposure of the seekers-has caused an increase in "public cynicism and disengagement." Less than half of the voting-age population cast ballots in the 1996 presidential election, and an increasing lack of interest in politics on the part of young people forebodes "even lower turnout rates in the future," they assert.

Perhaps even more troubling, argues George Mason University political scientist Hugh Heclo, is that the fundamental governmental goal of long-term problem solving has become secondary to the immediate goal of winning the next election. In his overview chapter of the AEI book, Heclo cites the disinclination of Republicans and Democrats to compromise on solutions to critical problems such as the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund.

"Long-term settlements appropriate to governing may actually be the last thing wanted by those most committed to the permanent campaign," Heclo asserts after noting how leaders of both parties, as they "looked toward the 2000 elections," have chosen to engage in "posturing rather than deliberating" over the Social Security issue.

On the surface, it can be argued that the more closely politicians are attuned to the desires of voters, the better our democratic system is working. Heclo and his fellow authors readily concede that there should be much in common between governing and campaigning. What has gone wrong, they believe, is that modern marketing techniques and communications technologies have given politicians the ability and the incentive to manipulate public opinion rather than inform it.

Through the news media-particularly television-the public is regularly bombarded with what historian Daniel Boorstin described 40 years ago as "pseudo events." Heclo explains that "these are not real or spontaneous, but orchestrated events that occur because someone has planned, incited or otherwise brought them into being for the purpose of being observed and swaying opinion." Such arranged happenings include news leaks, interviews, trial balloons, reaction stories, staged appearances and confrontations that have become so commonplace that "most of us hardly recognize [them] as pseudo anymore," the George Mason political scientist laments.

Add negative political advertising to the mix, and political discourse becomes even less edifying. "Contemporary election campaign practices, including attack ads with nasty, inaccurate and unfair charges, have left millions of Americans manifestly dissatisfied with the electoral process and disposed to assume the worst about those who compete for their attention and votes," write Ornstein and Mann.

The techniques used to market candidates increasingly are being applied-with the same dispiriting effect-to manipulate public opinion on key policy issues. "The same style of attack ads, applied in policy wars in Washington and in sham 'issue advocacy' barrages against candidates, has added to the cynicism about the legitimacy of policy decisions," Ornstein and Mann add.

If America's political discourse has been cheapened, as the authors suggest, the degradation has not come without cost. It takes big bucks to pay for all the consultants, pollsters and advertisements. As a result, "fund-raising trumps all competitors in the struggle for the attention and energy of politicians and their aides," the editors glumly assert.

None of these developments can bring much joy to the candidates and officeholders caught up on the seemingly endless treadmill of the permanent campaign. But as long as America's politicians appear focused solely on winning the next election, the public's business will be poorly done and confidence in government will continue to erode.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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Choose Your Target

Dick Kirschten — Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 -0400

dkirschten@govexec.com

n the never-never land of government outsourcing, accountability is the first victim when scandal rears its ugly head.

The uproar over security lapses at the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory offers a textbook example of how politicians pick and choose their scapegoats when management responsibilities are delegated to outside contractors.

The Los Alamos lab has been the subject of heated wrangling on Capitol Hill since early last year when allegations of espionage were lodged against a longtime scientist at the facility, who since has been fired and now faces criminal charges of mishandling classified materials but not of spying.

The battle intensified this year when it was revealed that two computer hard drives containing critical nuclear weapons secrets were missing from a storage vault at the lab but then mysteriously reappeared behind a nearby copying machine.

To congressional Republicans, the failures to adequately protect nuclear weapons data at Los Alamos clearly demonstrate the managerial incompetence of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., has called for Richardson's resignation. "You've lost all credibility," he told the embattled Cabinet official at a hearing in June. "It's time for you to go."

Not so fast, say Democratic lawmakers. The fall should be taken instead by the contractor hired to manage the Los Alamos facility. "Because of the University of California's total inability to carry out its security obligations under its contract, we request that you terminate the department's contract with the university as soon as possible," said ranking minority member of the House Commerce Committee, John D. Dingell, D-Mich., and five Democratic colleagues in a letter to Richardson.

The pattern of partisanship is perfectly predictable-with Republicans seeking to bring down Richardson, a prominent Democrat mentioned as a possibility for the No. 2 spot on his party's presidential ticket, and Democrats closing ranks to stave off such an embarrassment. But the mad dash to assign blame in the most politically convenient manner obscures efforts to grapple constructively with the problem of effectively managing a government that increasingly farms out its work and delegates key responsibilities to independent firms or institutions.

Ironically, the University of California's role as manager at Los Alamos is one of the government's longest running and arguably most successful contractual arrangements. It dates back to 1943-two years before Hiroshima and Nagasaki-when it was decided that the quickest and most efficient way to develop the atom bomb was to put experienced administrators of scientific research in charge of the nation's weapons laboratories. That formula helped bring victory not only in World War II but in the Cold War arms race that followed.

Despite its longevity, however, the marriage between the traditions of military secrecy and academic openness has always been a troubled one. And even Richardson's Democratic allies concede that the embattled Energy Secretary has failed in his efforts to get managers of the Los Alamos facility to tighten security. "Despite all of your strong actions, the workplace culture has not changed," Dingell said in the letter. "In fact, it appears that only the efforts to hide the laboratory's lapses have been heightened."

For their part, Republican lawmakers-over Richardson's objections-have pushed through legislation creating a semi-autonomous new agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration, to oversee the protection of America's nuclear secrets.

In many ways, the thrashing about to create a new bureaucracy and to demand a new contractor, is symptomatic of a fundamental unease over the government's lack of control when it relies upon the expertise of outsiders.

"We haven't figured that out very well," asserts Donald Kettl, a professor of public affairs and political science at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He argues that "as more of the government's work is contracted out," new kinds of talent must be brought into the government.

Rather than simply rearranging organizational charts, Kettl says there must be a new emphasis-in both training and recruitment-on strengthening the capability for overseeing contractors. "We need to find people who have the skills to manage the government we have grown into." One way to do that, Kettl adds, is to make federal hiring rules more flexible in order to capitalize on the experience of the many "people who are out there doing the government's work, but not as part of the government."

In a healthy and competitive two-party system, government goofs will always elicit howls of recrimination from an administration's political opponents and spur damage control efforts by its allies. But instead of generating smoke screens to blur the issue of accountability, government insiders need to do a better job of managing their outside associates. It might just be easier to reduce the goofs than to explain them.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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Gore In Charge

Dick Kirschten — Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 -0400

letters@govexec.com

rom birth, Al Gore has been steeped in politics. For the first 22 years of his life, his father sat in Congress, and for the past 23 and a half years, Gore has divided his time between the House, the Senate and the vice presidency. In Los Angeles this month, the Democratic Party will bestow its presidential nomination upon him.

But for a man so close to the pinnacle of political success, the 52-year-old Gore possesses a most curious image. Not even his most enthusiastic supporters would cast him for a movie role as a smooth politician.

Although keenly partisan, Gore doesn't come across as "a political animal," says Roy Neel, who has known Gore for a quarter century and was his top aide on Capitol Hill. Suggesting that wonkish may be the way most people see his former boss, Neel shrugs and says "raw politics has never been perceived to be [Gore's] strength anyway."

Management guru David Osborne, who helped Gore launch the Clinton administration's "reinventing government" initiative in 1993, bluntly declares that the Vice President "is not a gifted campaigner." And Steven Kelman, an academic who served as an Office of Management and Budget expert on procurement reforms, describes Gore as something of a paradox among politicians, someone "who seems much worse in public than he is in private."

Compared with others who have served in the Oval Office, Gore would be a President who "likes governing and governance better than he likes politics," says Elaine Kamarck, a top campaign adviser who earlier served as the Vice President's point person on government reform. After all, she explains, "reinventing government certainly was not something that anybody would tell you is the ticket to political success."

Attorney Ron Klain, former chief of staff to the Vice President, adds that Gore is not entirely indifferent to politics. "He loves to get out there on the campaign trail and interact with folks, [but] the part of politics that he does not enjoy is . . . thinking about strategies and gamesmanship" and the sorts of tactics that amount simply to devising a "means to an end," Klain says.

To Gore's admirers, however, the Vice President's lack of a natural talent promoting himself in a crowd-pleasing manner is more than offset by his seriousness of purpose and detailed understanding of the emerging information age economy. Even his uneven performances as a candidate-Gore's abrupt shifts in tone and garb and the sudden changes in the leadership and location of his campaign operation-are said to reflect strengths that would prove useful in the Oval Office. Among them:

He takes the pragmatic approach of a skilled manager in his approach to problems. "He's going to do things differently, as the situation requires him to," Neel says. "Gore had to step into the shoes of a manager to run the reinventing government initiative and had to learn the way managers think," Osborne adds. And Donald Kettl, an expert on public administration at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), stresses that Gore would bring a unique "understanding of-and appreciation for-the connection between management and policy" to the presidency.

He believes in government and wants it to succeed. Despite his wonkish fascination with new technologies and the evolving information economy, Gore's political roots extend back to the New Deal and the Tennessee Valley Authority electrification
projects that brought higher living standards to his home state and region. "He thinks of reinventing government as redeeming a great experiment [begun] 200 years ago that's sort of scraping along now because [government] hasn't been working well," says Bob Stone, who directed Gore's government reform initiative.

He's a known quantity on Capitol Hill, where his grasp of policy details is respected even by those who philosophically differ with him. "Members of Congress will be able to engage [with Gore] in thoughtful, constructive discussion and debate," predicts former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler of South Dakota. Neel, who now heads a telecommunications trade association, adds that a Gore White House would likely be staffed with "real pros [who] know how to return phone calls and move information on"-skills that are key to smoothing relations between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A successful President, of course, must be more than a pragmatic manager with a grasp of the new information economy and knowledge of the ways of Capitol Hill. If Gore makes it to the White House, he'll also have to master the old-fashioned art of political persuasion that's needed to build public confidence in-and support for-his agenda.

A Managerial Mentality?

A humorous anecdote from his early days in Congress may offer a hint that Gore has a manager's penchant for listening to expert advice and using it to achieve the outcome he desires. According to Neel, a wealthy friend of the Gore family berated the young House member for "dressing like a Tennessee farmer" and warned him that he would never rise to higher office if he continued to commit such sartorial sins as wearing his trouser cuffs 2 inches too short.

With great reluctance, so the story goes, Gore accepted the friend's invitation to be fitted by a tailor. But when his new, custom-made suit arrived a month later, the trousers were just the way Gore wanted them-"still 2 inches too short," Neel laughs.

Osborne finds Gore's focus on results refreshing. As President, he suggests, "Gore would pay attention to the quality of management and implementation in the federal government." That sets him apart from "most politicians, [who] think that passing a law or adopting a policy means having an impact of some kind, forgetting that if it's implemented poorly, it is worthless," argues Osborne, who is now a partner in the consulting firm Public Strategies Group.

Kettl adds that Gore's longtime interest in computers and the Internet makes him particularly well equipped to champion reforms in the way the government is managed and goes about carrying out its mission. "He's a new wave kind of guy who looks at technology, looks at customer service and looks at innovative management practices," the University of Wisconsin academic says.

Stories abound about the Vice President's voluminous e-mail correspondence. "He lived by it," recalls former reinvention honcho Stone. "He used it for serious work and [also] had a lot of fun with it." Stone estimates that he has sent some 200 e-mail messages to Gore and received prompt answers to every one of them. And he says it was not at all uncommon for Gore to interrupt a working meeting when his computer beeped so that he could check out the latest e-mail message.

Kelman, who's now a professor of public management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a contributing columnist for Government Executive, says he found that the best way to get a needed decision or response was via e-mail. He recalls the large computer screen on Gore's desk as the dominant feature of the Vice President's office. "It was quite large-certainly bigger than mine-and it was always turned on."

Gore's ex-vice presidential chief of staff Klain says it is significant that Gore not only would be "our first e-mail-friendly President, but the first President to carry a Palm Pilot on his belt," because it indicates how broadly he reaches out for advice. Such devices, Klain adds, short-circuit the gatekeeping functions that traditionally have limited access to Presidents. "He's more of a modern-style CEO than an old-style, up-the-chain-of-command sort of person," the former aide asserts.

Klain describes Gore as a "voracious reader" who is remarkably efficient at "getting through an enormous amount of material very quickly." He likes to debate issues and to have them debated before him. "He likes to understand every side of an issue, so he'll frequently use the staff to play devil's advocate and look at something from an opposing viewpoint," says Kamarck.

Gore exhibited sound managerial instincts, according to Kettl, in organizing the administration's management reform initiative. "There was always one very senior person close to him shepherding the proj- ect, plus a small coterie of people who made up the staff of what first was called the National Performance Review and then became the National Partnership for Reinventing Government."

Within the agencies, larger groups of people became involved in what Kettl describes as a series of concentric circles that formed "kind of a virtual reinvention community." Because relations between the administration and Congress soured early, "it became clear that the reinvention project would have to proceed without legislation and accomplish what it could administratively," Kettl says. The lone exception was in the area of procurement reform, where laws were enacted in 1993 and 1994.

In Kettl's view, Gore's performance on management reform issues demonstrated "an instinct for flexibility and pragmatism in dealing with tough political realities" and showed that "he has what it takes to stick with an issue for the long haul."

Morale Buster?

At first blush, the most significant accomplishment of the Gore-led "reinventing government" initiative was slashing the federal payroll by eliminating some 350,000 jobs. It was also the easiest thing to do, Kelman says, because "there was a political upside to downsizing government, and Gore could get some credit from the public for standing up to the [employee] interest groups."

Within the bureaucracy, however, there are bruised feelings and criticisms that some agencies have been hollowed out and no longer can adequately carry out the missions expected of them. Bobby L. Harnage, head of the largest federal workers' union, says his organization volunteered to work with the administration to arrive at cuts that would "right-size" the government. But the union chief says Clinton and Gore went too far. "They proceeded to downsize the government and to brag about it," he says, adding that "some very serious problems" have developed as a result.

Such grumbling is inevitable, counters Osborne, who credits Gore and his reinvention team with "going to great lengths to figure out how to get the government to work smarter and to cut costs by using technology." While agreeing that "there is no solution to a tough problem that doesn't have some downsides," Osborne insists that "there are a lot of career civil servants who feel liberated by what Gore has been trying to do. They've been given the freedom to actually use their heads and do the best that they can do."

Polling of federal employees indicates that morale is highest at agencies where the spirit of reinvention has taken hold. Overall, says Stone, about 60 percent of federal employees responding to a recent administration survey indicate they are satisfied with their jobs, only slightly lower than the 62 percent rate reported in comparable private-sector polls. But among the roughly one-third of government workers who said that management reform was a priority in their agency, the satisfaction rate was a striking 84 percent.

Harnage, national president of the 600,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, says reforms have been most successful where labor and management have worked together. "Everywhere there is a working partnership, it has produced a great example of how things ought to work," he declares. The union leader gives Gore mixed marks, noting that "there are areas where he has worked with us and areas where he has disappointed us."

Stone argues that Gore, as President, would command considerable loyalty, "particularly within the civil service," because he has met extensively with government workers to hear their views and express his confidence in their competence. The former director of the reinvention staff relates that he once suggested to Gore that he strike a compromise with Republican congressional leaders who wanted to create a bipartisan commission of experts to recommend changes in the way government operates. Gore pounded his fist on the table, Stone recalls, and replied: "Look, we've got the experts. The people who are in government are the experts at running it. We don't need to bring in a bunch of outsiders who don't know it."

Gore put that belief into practice, according to Osborne, by recruiting career civil servants such as Stone, a veteran Defense Department manager, to staff the reinvention initiative.

The reform initiative ran into problems, Osborne adds, not from civil servants but from "political appointees, whom we just assumed would come along because they worked for Clinton and Gore." It didn't happen that way, he recalls, explaining that "political appointees typically are not managers and tend not to trust the troops. They focused on policy and politics and just kind of ignored reinvention."

As President, Gore's time and attention would mostly be drawn to more pressing issues, both domestic and foreign, his supporters agree. But in appointing his administration, he's more likely than other recent occupants of the Oval Office to seek candidates with managerial interests and skills. "He would be the President most concerned with issues of how the federal government actually operates and is run that we've ever had," Kelman says.

Coping With Capitol Hill

Over the past two dozen years, Gore's time has been divided equally between service as a member of the House, as a Senator and, in the capacity of Vice President, as the president of the Senate. He thus has long-standing friendships with many lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.

Such connections can be quite valuable in facilitating good communication, notes Neel, but a President ultimately must pursue his own initiatives and agenda. "And if that is counter to what the leadership of Congress-Republican or Democratic-wants, then he is going to have to make a fight. And all the wonderful relationships in the world aren't going to make that a lot easier," the former Gore aide warns.

Neel is quick to make the case that Gore, during his years on the Hill, frequently worked closely with like-minded Republican lawmakers on arms control and telecommunications issues, as well as a variety of investigative and oversight activities. "Where there were mutual interests, he was as nonpartisan as you can get," Neel recalls.

In the White House, however, things are likely to be different. "Presidents are elected as partisans, and when they find themselves at loggerheads with Congress, partisanship is going to come into it," Neel says.

Partisanship aside, Gore's Hill experience should make him more sensitive to procedural gaffes that create needless friction between lawmakers and the White House. Pressler, for example, suggests that Gore would surround himself with aides who would be more forthcoming with Congress than the current administration has been. Legislators seeking the administration's position on a bill or amendment "would find out right away," the ex-Senator predicts, adding, "that's not the case right now."

Neel says the key to legislative liaison work is honesty and professionalism, not personal relationships or cronyism. A Republican congressional leadership, he explains, will not expect a Gore White House to be staffed by people with whom it has close relations. But GOP leaders will look for "people who know their jobs, are honest and play straight with them," the longtime Gore aide says.

Kelman notes that Gore's ties to members of his own party on Capitol Hill proved invaluable in overcoming obstacles encountered during the development of the procurement reform bills passed in 1993 and 1994. "I always knew that in a pinch, if I needed his help in dealing with Congress, I could get it," the former OMB official recalls.

On several occasions, Gore either telephoned key lawmakers or set up meetings in his office to work out problems that, for the most part, were raised by Democrats concerned about protecting the interests of constituents such as minority contractors, Kelman says.

As President, Kettl says, Gore would still have his work cut out trying to bring along "Democrats on the Hill who have old constituencies to protect. Especially the public employee unions." He nonetheless lauds Gore for his "understanding of and appreciation for the connection between management and policy" and for his willingness to become involved in the low-profile issue of government reform.

Occupants of the Oval Office rarely focus clearly on issues of internal structure and improving systems in ways that enhance what a President can do, notes Princeton University presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein. Kettl thinks Gore's grasp of the internal workings of government could make him a rare exception. "He's been around the federal government for a long time, and if he doesn't understand how the sausage is made, then there is never going to be anybody who understands it," he says.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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A Partnership at Risk

Dick Kirschten — Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 -0400

letters@govexec.com

f America's voters promote George W. Bush from governor of Texas to boss of the federal workforce, he'd better be prepared for a sharp change of climate on the labor-management front. As President, of course, he won't owe many debts to organized labor. (According to a campaign spokesman, no unions have yet endorsed his candidacy.) But should he sit in the Oval Office, he will be chief executive of the enterprise that has become the nation's last stronghold of collective bargaining.

While organized labor's clout in the private sector has declined over the past 15 years, it has enjoyed steady growth in the federal workplace. According to Robert M. Tobias, retired president of the National Treasury Employees Union, 80 percent of federal employees now work in sectors represented by unions, compared with only 9.4 percent of workers in private business.

This is a far cry from Bush's experience in Texas, where state right-to-work statutes have limited unionization. "Organizing is a tough job here," observes Greg Powell, business manager of a Texas local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which is struggling to gain a foothold among state corrections workers. "Our governor proclaims to be inclusive, but organized labor certainly isn't part of his constituency as he sees it," Powell contends.

Powell's national union is stridently opposing Bush, in large part because of his efforts as governor to contract out activities currently conducted by state employees. An article in a recent issue of the union's magazine, Public Employee, carried the blaring headline, "Bushwhacked in Texas: Scheme to Privatize 13,000 Public-Sector Jobs Suggests Danger of a Bush Presidency."

Such high-octane scare rhetoric, of course, should come as no surprise in a closely contested election in which organized labor is backing Bush's Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore. But a Bush victory could spell trouble not just for public employee unions but for the new administration's hopes of effecting reforms to make government work more efficiently. "The interests of unions and managers overlap," notes Tobias, who now directs the Institute for the Study of Policy Implementation at American University. "Both sides need collaborative problem-solving methods to achieve their goals," Tobias wrote in a column in the April Government Executive.

But Tobias's vision of a cooperative atmosphere in which public employee unions refrain from "constantly sowing seeds of distrust, publicizing 'bad' management decisions, and blocking needed change in agency operations" is not likely to be achieved unless labor is given a voice in the decision-making process.

When Democrat Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he issued an executive order mandating that agencies enter into partnerships with their employees. Bobby L. Harnage Sr., national president of the 600,000-member American Federation of Government Employees, said in an interview that the edict has produced "a few great examples of how things ought to work," but has led to "total failures" in many other cases.

The public sector unions are particularly disappointed that the downsizing of the government during the 1990s took far less of a toll among middle-management personnel, as they had expected, than among their members in lower-grade positions. Research by my fellow columnist, Brookings Institution scholar Paul C. Light, shows that employment in grades GS 11-15 fell by 7,000 from 1992-97, while employment in grades GS 1-10 plummeted by more than 170,000, and blue-collar jobs were cut by another 100,000.

Harnage said he gives Gore, the point man for the Clinton administration's reinvention of government initiatives, credit for his efforts to "work with us in a lot of areas, even if he has disappointed us in some." By contrast, he said the Bush campaign rebuffed his union's overtures to discuss federal employee issues. "Before we made an endorsement, we reached out and said we would like to talk about what we would like to see in the next President of the United States as our employer," Harnage declared.

Given that Bush has taken a number of campaign stands that are anathema to organized labor-including his opposition to the deduction of union dues from workers' paychecks and his support of the partial investment of Social Security taxes in private savings accounts-an accommodation with public employee unions was never in the cards.

But if Harnage is correct in his assessment that "all-out war has been declared," there may be negative consequences for both labor and management in a Bush administration. For the unions, as Tobias has argued, there is the danger of becoming "irrelevant" if they cannot find ways to work with management to improve the job satisfaction of skilled federal employees. And for Bush-the candidate who proclaims himself "a uniter, not a divider"-there is the risk of presiding over an increasingly contentious and disgruntled workforce that lacks the knowledge, skills and incentive to increase productivity and please the American public.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal. Contact him at dkirschten@govexec.com.

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Bush as Boss

Dick Kirschten — Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 -0400

dkirschten@govexec.com

hen George W. Bush took office as governor of Texas in January 1995, he was flush from lucrative business ventures in oil and Major League Baseball and armed with a Harvard M.B.A. Having pledged to "bring a conservative, business approach to state government," he sought advice from close associates in the private sector to help him choose key members of his new administration.

But when it came time to name a top aide to help control the state's purse strings, Bush's team of headhunters turned not to the business community, but to the institutional knowledge of the government bureaucracy. They recommended Albert Hawkins, deputy director of the state's Legislative Budget Board. Although Bush had never met Hawkins, a career state employee with a predominantly Democratic voting history, he enthusiastically recruited him to join his inner circle.

Now, after handily winning reelection to a second term as governor of the nation's second most populous state, Bush's soaring political stock has rocketed him to the Republican presidential nomination. Once again, he is touting a conservative agenda of cutting taxes, encouraging individual responsibility and limiting the role of government.

For those wondering what things will be like if the Republicans win back the White House this November, the recruitment of Hawkins offers some clues to the management style Bush would bring to the Oval Office:

He relies heavily upon trusted underlings for quality information and advice and acts decisively after weighing the options they present him. He had been told by an accountant friend, for example, that Hawkins possessed "the brightest budget mind in the state of Texas" and was somebody who knew almost everything worth knowing about state government.
He's a big booster of involving private-sector interests, including faith-based organizations, in the delivery of many-but not all-public services. "He knows there are techniques and ways of doing things in the private sector that are easily adapted to state business," Hawkins explains. But the veteran fiscal analyst says he was persuaded that Bush also recognizes that government retains an important role in "making sure that needed public services are delivered in the best way."
He has also demonstrated a pragmatic ability to elicit cooperation-or at the very least establish cordial relations-across partisan and ideological lines. Hawkins discovered just how charming and persuasive the Texas governor can be when the two first met. "Going into that meeting, I didn't think I'd be agreeing to anything," Hawkins recalls. But after receiving reassurances of Bush's respect for his talent and the governor's commitment to public service, Hawkins agreed to join the team. The issue of the budget expert's political leanings never came up.

Circumstances, of course, won't be quite the same if Bush moves to Washington's larger stage in January. In Texas, a low-tax state that trails the nation in per capita revenues, philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans tend to be narrow and the voice of organized labor-no friend of Bush's-is muted by the state's right-to-work laws.

In the nation's capital, by contrast, the ideological gulf between congressional
Democrats and Republicans has widened dramatically in recent years and public employee unions are more of a factor than Bush is accustomed to. Nonetheless, he has pledged to "restore civility and respect to our nation's politics" if he wins the presidency. Trying to make good on that promise will truly test his managerial skills.

The Big Decisions

In campaign debates, Bush sometimes appears overly cautious and scripted in his disciplined efforts to "stay on message." But those who have worked closely with him say he approaches important decisions with the instinctive self-assurance of a jet fighter pilot, which he was in the late 1960s for Texas' Air National Guard.

"He does not second-guess himself about decisions," says Tom Schieffer, who served as president of the Texas Rangers when Bush was the baseball team's managing general partner. "George is very good at addressing problems as they come across his desk and then moving on to the next one. When he makes mistakes, he doesn't dwell on them, he tries to learn from them. He thinks it's important to be decisive and provide some leadership."

Schieffer describes Bush as "a classic executive," who focuses on strategic decisions and leaves it to others to work out the details. "He very much believes that the chief executive's responsibility is to manage the other executives," the former Rangers associate explained.

Bush, according to Schieffer, resisted the trap that some baseball owners have fallen into of trying to influence decisions on the playing field. "We basically knew enough about baseball to know that we didn't know," the former team president says, and left such decisions to the "guys who spend their whole lives watching baseball games and studying players." The day-to-day business operations of the franchise, including the building of a new stadium, were similarly delegated to Schieffer.

Schieffer adds, however, that the executives working under Bush's "strategic" direction were held accountable for results. "If the day-to-day operations had not gone well, I wouldn't have been president," he says. And during Bush's tenure, the team's top baseball professionals-field manager Bobby Valentine and general manager Tom Grieve-were replaced "because basically we hadn't won," Schieffer notes.

Former Texas Republican Party executive director Karen Hughes, who has worked as Bush's communications director in the governor's office and in the presidential campaign, adds that Bush believes it's his job to keep in touch with his key lieutenants. "The governor really puts a priority on recruiting strong, capable people, and he understands that to recruit and retain such people you have to give them access to the boss," she says.

In Austin, Hughes explains, Bush chose not to have a traditional chief of staff to act as a traffic cop for the governor's office. Instead, he set up a staff structure that included an executive assistant and six division directors, all of whom reported directly to Bush. In his campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep (William Morrow, 1999), Bush wrote that he did not want "to replicate the environment" of his father's White House, in which key appointees "felt stifled because they had to go through a filter to get information to the President."

Lawrence B. Lindsey, who served in both the Reagan and Bush White Houses and later was a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, says, however, that if the younger Bush becomes President, the White House staff will have to be powerful enough to prevent "every little problem [from] percolating up to the Oval Office."

Lindsey, who has brought together leading economists to advise the Bush campaign, says "the thing that struck me the most about Bush early on was how thoroughly comfortable with himself he was" in the role of decision maker. "He's really a CEO. He asks us for advice and we give it. Of course, if you have six economists, you get seven opinions. And then he calls the shots. That's the way it should be." Lindsey says he knows from personal experience that Bush is not at all shy about rejecting advice he thinks is unsound or demanding more information. "He's very much a Texan, and I was once on the receiving end of a very straight-shooting response that one would not want to see printed," the economic adviser recalls.

Once major decisions about basic goals are made, Lindsey predicts, Bush will give his Cabinet officers and agency heads "a lot of leeway" to figure out how to get the job done. "He would not just delegate responsibility," Lindsey says, "he would also delegate power. If he thinks something is worth doing, he'll make sure that he puts a person in charge who can get it done."

Being More Businesslike

Indianapolis industrialist Allan B. Hubbard, a former business school classmate of Bush's who served in his father's White House, describes the Texas governor as a believer in "free markets and minimalist government" who strongly believes that government performs best when responsibility is "pushed down as close to the people as possible."

Bush spokeswoman Hughes adds that the Texas governor expects his appointees to abide by "clear principles" that include asking whether a decision encourages local control, individual responsibility and limited government and whether what's being proposed is a proper role for government.

Not surprisingly, Bush has turned to a local politician-former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith-to be the chief domestic policy adviser for his campaign. Goldsmith, whose innovative work in the privatization of municipal public services has drawn much acclaim, is crafting a proposal for achieving similar efficiencies within the federal government.

"We have looked at government reform for a substantial period with a group of experts drawn from state and local governments, as well as the federal government," Goldsmith says. A key objective, he says, will be to take better advantage of the Internet and other technologies that can bypass "traditional, bureaucratic methods and allow citizens easier and more direct interaction with their government."

During his two terms as Indianapolis' mayor from 1991 to 1999, Goldsmith famously observed that "if you open up the Yellow Pages and there are four other businesses doing what you do, maybe they could do it better. Conversely, if nobody else is in the business, maybe we should be doing it."

Contracting out services to private firms is just one of a variety of strategic tools that "are simply a means to the end of improving the quality of public services and driving down their costs," Goldsmith says. He notes that greater use of new information technology can lead to both cost savings in procurement transactions and the "enhancement of customer satisfaction" in service delivery. "I've personally been involved in e-commerce stuff for about 15 years and I guess I'm an enthusiast to the point of excess," he says.

As governor, Bush has backed several initiatives aimed at reforming the delivery of state services. Every two years, his office organizes and sponsors "Excellence in Government" conferences, which bring in outside speakers from business and academia to discuss ways that agency managers can achieve higher levels of performance and make better use of technological innovations.

But major controversy erupted over a Bush proposal to invite major corporations to take charge of and modernize the state's screening of applicants for welfare benefits, including Medicaid and food stamps. The scheme drew heavy criticism from organized labor and welfare advocacy groups and was blocked when the Clinton administration declined to issue waivers needed to implement the new approach.

Bush's budget director, Hawkins, argues that critics misrepresented the program by claiming that the state was delegating the authority to determine welfare eligibility to for-profit contractors. "There was no such delegation," Hawkins says. "The idea was to create a more efficient and effective automated support system that would have enabled citizens to enroll for various benefits at a single location." The use of modern technology, he added, would have led to administrative savings as well.

Bush was more successful on another front. Working with legislative leaders, he won approval of the consolidation of nearly a dozen separate employment services and work training programs into a single new entity, the Texas Workforce Commission. Organized labor groups agreed to support the merger proposal on condition that they would be permitted to name one of the new agency's three commissioners. But Bush outraged union leaders, according to Richard Levy, legal director of the Texas AFL-CIO, by ignoring their recommendations in naming the initial "labor" member of the commission.

Getting Along With the Help

Those who have worked closely with Bush insist that his optimism and sunny demeanor--some refer to it Reaganesque-are central to his leadership style. But they also insist that a Bush presidency, unlike Reagan's, would seek to boost the morale of federal workers rather than enter into an adversarial relationship with them.

"Bush is not someone who believes government is evil," argues Lindsey. "He does believe that government is something that should be done well. So I think he will set the right moral and philosophical tone that is needed to rebuild these institutions."

Lindsey says that under Bush, government streamlining measures would primarily focus on the functions "that contribute to most people's image of a bloated bureaucracy, such as the proverbial government office where you have to get seven rubber stamps on a document." But he predicts that Bush would want to strengthen "the other function of the bureaucracy, which is to give timely information and guidance to the executive."

Lindsey says that if a "Cabinet Secretary were to make the case to Bush that it is a national priority to rebuild some of the senior information-gathering functions in the government, Bush would spend the political capital to get it done."

The Bush economic adviser expresses concern that in recent years "the human capital of the government has been run down to a point that is dangerous." He notes, as an example, that "30 years ago, senior positions at the Treasury Department were premier jobs to aspire to, but that is no longer the case for younger people" launching professional careers today.

Bush, according to his campaign advisers, would also be less inclined to "hamstring" senior government officials by exerting excessive White House control over the execution of their missions. Goldsmith says his working group on government efficiency is studying "empowerment strategies for federal employees." The idea, he says, "is to make government more responsive to citizens through a range of techniques that simultaneously increase the discretion and authority of the federal worker."

Goldsmith also indicates, however, that further federal downsizing may be on the way. Asked whether Bush might use reductions in force to reduce the size of the federal workforce, he says: "I would observe that a significant rate of attrition and early retirements will allow an enormous amount of innovation without having to get anywhere near the issue of layoffs."

In Austin, according to Hawkins, Bush has been able to boost the morale of state workers by conveying his appreciation of their values and dedication. "You don't come into the public service expecting to get any stock options," Hawkins says, adding that Bush understands and respects employees who seek the less tangible rewards that come from helping others.

As governor, Hawkins notes, Bush has initiated a "Texas Stars" program to give recognition to employees of programs that excel in meeting targets set under the state's performance-based budgeting system.

In the view of Hawkins and former Texas Rangers partner Schieffer, much of Bush's success has come from his skill at making people feel good about working for him. Hawkins argues that jaded Washingtonians should not underestimate "the optimism that he will bring into the government." And Schieffer remarks on Bush's popularity with everyone connected with the baseball club, from ticket takers to superstars. "He has such a good spirit about him, and he is interested in people."

These are the traits of the man who says his goal is "to change the tone of Washington" so that he can work with reform-minded members of both political parties "to get some problems solved and then gracefully retire to Texas."

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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Defending Public Service

Dick Kirschten — Thu, 01 Jun 2000 00:00:00 -0400

letters@govexec.com

stute executives at top publishing houses have a keen scent for blood. Like personal injury lawyers, they move in quickly when disaster strikes. The Clinton impeachment episode, for example, produced a flurry of titles from publishers seeking to capitalize on the Monica and Bill scandal.

At least one publishing house, however, took a broader view of the political carnage and set out to commission a book about the larger collateral damage inflicted upon the government and upon public servants in general. The result is a slender tome, In Praise of Public Life, written by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., and author Michael D'Orso and published earlier this year by Simon & Schuster.

As Lieberman is quick to acknowledge, the idea for the book came from the publishing house's editorial director, Alice Mayhew. He met Mayhew at the urging of his longtime friend Jack Romanos, the president of Simon & Schuster. From her Manhattan vantage point, Mayhew was alarmed by the public's growing disillusionment with Washington, reflected in declining voter turnout and gimmicky proposals, such as term limits, designed to clip the wings of elected officials.

Because Lieberman had broken party ranks in the fall of 1998 to deliver a speech on the Senate floor denouncing President Clinton's behavior as "disgraceful" and "immoral," the publishers viewed him as someone who could speak with integrity in defense of those who serve in government. Mayhew, the senator recalled, "wanted someone to write about public life and respond to the broad cynicism" with which it is now viewed.

Speaking at a recent American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research luncheon, Lieberman, who's up for re-election this year, said the request instantly struck a chord. After nearly three decades in public office, and despite occasional moments of "frustration, even anger," he said, "I feel grateful that I made the career choice I did."

But Lieberman quickly added that his sense of the pride and satisfaction to be derived from public service is not widely shared by young people today. Interns who serve in his office say that "very few" of their classmates are interested in government careers because they view the political sphere as "nasty, expensive, too partisan and [a place where] you don't have any privacy." Those are "four pretty good arguments," the Connecticut senator ruefully conceded.

Such attitudes, he added, are particularly disturbing, because other "indicators show that the student generation of today is quite interested in service," with increasing numbers choosing careers, such as teaching, that advance the welfare of others. "But not as many," he said, "are interested in going into government service, and certainly not elective service."

In addition, Lieberman pointed out, there has been "a terrible decline in voter turnout." In 1996, only 49 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, the lowest percentage in a presidential election year since 1924. Two years later, at the outset of the Clinton impeachment proceedings, turnout for the midterm congressional elections was just 36 percent, the lowest rate since 1942.

To Lieberman, the mistrust of government by the young, and the decline in voting among the population in general, signal "a low point in the American people's relationship with their government,. . . a real crisis of confidence, not just in politicians, but in the value of public life in our democracy."

His book is a defense of "the values, honor and necessity" of public service." He told his audience of government insiders that "we have to make the case that if you are concerned about the quality of education or the quality of health care, that government is a way to make it better, perhaps the most consequential way to make it better."

The stakes are high. "We need to convince more young people who want to make a difference that they should enter public life," Lieberman writes. "For the American experiment in self-government to remain vital, we need more people to serve in that government and to lead public lives."

Lieberman argues that to regain the confidence of everday citizens government officials must lead by example, putting aside excessive partisanship and engaging in honest compromises to achieve progress. The increasing use of the courts and congressionally authorized investigations for partisan purposes "demeans both of those great institutions," he warned.

But citizens also must become more active in demanding higher standards, he says: "If, for example, the dizzying and dismaying amount of money it takes to run for Congress or the presidency today seems outrageous and corrupting to you, as it does to me, demand that the rules for raising and spending money on political campaigns be reformed."

In the end, the honor and importance of public service will be restored only "if more good people get involved," Lieberman concluded. Whether they will choose to do so "is an open question," he said. "It's in the balance."

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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Divided They Fall

Dick Kirschten — Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 -0400

dkirschten@govexec.com

owever the slugfest between George W. Bush and Al Gore comes out, let's just hope that the victor has coattails. If the past few years of divided government have taught us anything, it's that the next President's chances of resolving big problems like the solvency of Social Security and Medicare or charting a post-Cold War foreign policy will be far better if his own party commands majorities on Capitol Hill.

The congressional oversight process, which of late has been devoted more to scandal-mongering than constructive efforts to enhance programs and management, would also profit greatly if the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue were to come into political alignment.

This is especially true this year, given that experts are predicting a tight and nasty general election campaign. The likely outcome will leave no shortage of bruised feelings and a narrowly divided Congress. If Bush wins the presidency but Democrats regain control of the House, we may be in for at least two more years of backbiting and stalemate. Ditto if Gore gains the Oval Office but Republicans continue to rule the legislative roost.

There has been much talk recently about growing political polarization in Washington and the collapse of the bipartisan center where important compromises once were hashed out. For the first time in the 19 years that it has analyzed congressional voting patterns, National Journal found a clear liberal-conservative divide between Senate Democrats and Republicans in 1999. In previous years, there always had been an overlapping cluster of a dozen or so conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans who formed a centrist bloc. But last year, the most liberal Republican was rated to the right of the most conservative Democrat.

The "middle cluster" in the House was similarly found to have all but disappeared. Congressional Quarterly summed up the situation as "a perfect recipe for legislative gridlock: intense party-line voting and personal invective at a time of divided government and narrow majorities."

Such pessimism has not always pervaded the nation's capital. Twenty years ago, when Republican Ronald Reagan won the presidency but his party failed to wrest control of the House from the Democrats, it hardly was a formula for impasse. Indeed, in his first year in office, Reagan won approval of massive tax and spending cuts, altering government priorities that had stood since the New Deal.

But Reagan had something-aside from his considerable personal popularity-going for him in 1981 that does not exist today. It was a bloc of southern Democrats in the House, known as the "boll weevils," who could usually be counted upon to support Republican causes. In fact, one of the Reagan administration's key legislative advisers was a Louisana Democrat, Joe D. Waggoner Jr., who had been known during his service in the House from 1961 to 1978 as a master at engineering alliances between Dixie Democrats and the GOP.

For nearly half a century, such alliances served as a check on the Democratic Party's congressional dominance and paved the way for bipartisan compromises. The so-called "southern coalition" emerged as a force in Franklin Roosevelt's second term, thwarting his attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court, and subsequently shaped the outcome of major civil rights, labor and economic legislation, congressional historians note.

By the mid-1980s, however, the South had ceased to be a region of "one-party" politics, in which conservative candidates won election under the Democratic banner. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., for example, began his political career as an aide to conservative Democratic Rep. William Colmer but ran as a Republican to succeed his boss upon Colmer's retirement. Today, the region's conservatives mostly run as Republicans for seats made electorally safe by redistricting decisions that lump Democratic votes mostly into areas that maximize the electoral chances of black candidates.

The new "two-party" South has subsequently become the heart of the GOP's congressional base. And the senior southern "barons" who once were powerful Democratic committee chairmen have departed the scene. In essence, it isn't so much the center that has collapsed as it is that the bipartisan conservative coalition has died a natural death. As a result, what once appeared to be cooperation between Republicans and conservative-leaning Democrats now translates into highly polarized party-line votes.

To be sure, there are moderates on both sides of the aisle who still seek to forge centrist solutions to critical problems of the day, from improving education to fostering free trade. And it's equally true that both Bush and Gore will seek to steer their campaigns toward the political center between now and November. Bush, most certainly, will keep well clear of South Carolina's Bob Jones University, and Gore will hold no more private meetings in New York City with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

But whoever winds up in the White House had better not count too heavily on support from a centrist Congress.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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Who's Prepared to Govern?

Dick Kirschten — Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 -0500

dkirschten@govexec.com

ow that the field has narrowed in this year's presidential primaries, it appears most likely that a two-term Vice President with prior experience in Congress will face off in November against either a two-term governor of a large state or a candidate with extensive experience in the Senate. Which background provides the best preparation for forming an administration capable of managing the federal government?

For government executives who dedicate their professional careers to public service, this is no small question. Which major candidate has had the best on-the-job training to lead from the Oval Office? Do the records of past presidents offer any clues?

As luck would have it, noted presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein of Princeton University addresses that question in his book, The Presidential Difference, which is to be released in April. Greenstein examines the leadership styles and accomplishments of the 11 presidents who served during the final two-thirds of the 20th century. Four came to the job as former governors and five as vice presidents who had served in Congress. Of the remaining two, one came to the White House directly from the Senate and the other rose to power on the strength of his record as a senior Army general.

Greenstein rates the modern presidents on a half-dozen attributes ranging from "cognitive style" to "emotional intelligence." But the trait that seems to get the least attention during the campaign process, he said in an interview with Government Executive, is managerial skill. "Organizational capacity is the ignored underbelly of the presidency," he says.

When asked to rate the organizational prowess of each of the former presidents analyzed in his book, Greenstein issued the following grades:

Supporters of Texas Gov. George W. Bush will be relieved that big-state governors Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York) and Ronald Reagan (California) received safely passing B minuses. So too did John F. Kennedy, whose career most closely mirrors that of Arizona Sen. John McCain. Backers of Vice President Al Gore will probably claim boasting rights because higher grades were awarded to three former veeps: Gerald Ford (a surprise A minus), Harry Truman (B plus), and George Bush, the senior (a straight B).

But there are warning signs for all three camps. Greenstein gives low grades for "organizational capacity" to former governors Jimmy Carter (a grudging C) and Bill Clinton (an outright F). And Kennedy was chided for being "too free-wheeling and ad hoc" in his approach to key decisions. Nor did every former vice president shine. Richard Nixon squeaked out with a grade of B minus, mainly for "trying so hard," and Lyndon B. Johnson was left dangling between a C minus and a D.

The President best prepared to manage the government, in Greenstein's view, had no prior experience in elective office but instead had run a monumentally successful military campaign. Dwight Eisenhower stands "head and shoulders above all the others," the presidential scholar says. "No other chief executive has entered the White House with his organizational experience, and none has put comparable effort into structuring his presidency."

Greenstein, who not surprisingly gave Ike an A plus, credits him with several White House innovations, including the appointment of a chief of staff, the establishment of a congressional relations office and the creation of the post of national security assistant to the President. "He actually gave a campaign speech in 1952 saying we needed a better-organized national security process," Greenstein marvels.

Ford wins plaudits for emulating Eisenhower's national security decision-making apparatus and extending it into the realm of economic policy-making. He built "a very strong staff structure capable of fleshing out issues and options throughout the whole federal establishment," Greenstein says.

Truman receives kudos for "working very closely with the civil servants of the old Bureau of the Budget" to bring about the "quiet revolution" in which a procedure was established for reviewing spending requests to ensure their consistency with the President's program. Truman's managerial skills weren't honed in Washington, Greenstein notes, but in Missouri where he was "a county administrator who managed to get roads and buildings built."

Interest in managerial detail and reliance upon career civil servants, however, are not the traits that get politicians elected to high office. Of Reagan, Greenstein says, "there is no evidence that he was interested in organization at all." But Reagan, for the most part, was able to surround himself with competent people and his administration scored a number of substantial achievements, Greenstein adds.

The presidents who've fared worst in Greenstein's estimation are those who've tried to be their own chiefs of staff or have played aides off against one another, rather than building cohesive teams. From that perspective, what's most telling is not the office a candidate has previously held, but how well he structured and utilized his supporting staff resources.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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Voters Stymie Reformers

Dick Kirschten — Wed, 01 Mar 2000 00:00:00 -0500

dkirschten@govexec.com

or those of us in Washington who engage in political commentary, this is the cruelest of seasons. Starting in late January and accelerating through early March, voters have begun speaking for themselves in party caucuses and primary elections.

As cheerleaders for civic participation in governmental processes, we should be pleased by the commencement of the balloting. But for various reasons, we pundits are not happy just now even though there will be no let-up in the volume or intensity of our pontificating.

For one thing, voters tend to be a contrary lot who tend not to heed our recommendations. In this campaining year, for example, vast amounts of editorial rhetoric have been expended to warn against the contaminating influence of money on our political system. Yet the issue of campaign finance reform does not appear to excite a majority of the electorate. Indeed it will be deemed a major upset if either of the presidential contenders who have won highest accolades from the press for decrying special-interest contributions-Democrat Bill Bradley and Republican John McCain-wins his party's nomination.

Worse yet, growing percentages of the citizenry aren't bothering to vote at all. It's bad enough to be disagreed with, but it's even more humiliating to be totally ignored. No wonder we're in a funk.

David S. Broder of The Washington Post, for example, recently devoted a Sunday column to the lament that, even in candidate-saturated New Hampshire, some voters remained unconvinced "that it matters who wins the White House."

Broder's concern is mirrored by veteran "inside the Beltway" commentators Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, who write in the Brookings Review that "public cynicism and disengagement" are running rampant. They note that in 1996, "less than half the voting-age population" cast presidential ballots, a drop of almost 14 percentage points since 1960. And lack of interest among the young voters suggests even lower turnout rates in the future, Mann and Ornstein glumly prophesy.

Perhaps the gloomiest assessment of all comes from my National Journal colleague Jonathan Rauch, who postulates that Washington has become so stalemated and debilitated by special interest politics that we now must "adjust to government's end." Good grief! If government is at an end, what does that bode for those of us who make our livings criticizing its performance? Surely, we won't see punditry's end.

At such a moment, the temptation is great to blame those cynical and disengaged voters who pay so little attention to us when we exhort them to eschew self-serving behavior in favor of the larger good. Rauch approvingly cites Jimmy Carter's grumpy admonition that "the national interest is not always the sum of all of our single or special interests." When Carter said that, however, the public already had expressed its lack of interest in awarding him a second Oval Office term.

In his new book, Government's End, Rauch paints the public as a gullible and greedy lot. Special-interest lobbyists, he writes, find it surprisingly easy "to spook the public by screaming bloody murder" when attempts are made to pare back pet programs. And while "the public wants the government to be leaner," he adds, they don't want such economies to be achieved "at the expense of students, farmers, bankers, workers, retirees, homeowners, artists, teachers, train riders, or cats and dogs."

Rauch's observations are evocative of a comment by another colleague who, when reminded of President Clinton's favorable approval ratings amid the revelations of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, blurted in frustration, "Well, we may have to look into what's wrong with the American public."

There are reasons, however, for the public's low expectations with regard to Washington political behavior. Even Rauch concedes that to argue voters are ill-informed and too easily swayed by misleading political rhetoric and slick ad campaigns "fails to give the public quite enough credit." He says "the voters' cynicism, which admittedly is often justified, makes them quick to believe charges that the system will double-cross them."

Rauch describes modern Washington as a "dense jungle" swarming with "little gray groups and politicians and lobbyists and claques that occupy and ossify the government." His assessment has much merit, but those of us who earn our livings as Washington-based commentators should keep in mind that we too are a part of that establishment of "burrowing and crawling and stinging creatures" who inhabit Rauch's swamp. As such, we should resist the urge to scold the public for its indifference.

The government's stalemate may not be quite so perpetual as Rauch suggests. Or perhaps, it is a condition that the public-in prosperous and crisis-free times-doesn't regard as all that intolerable. For Washington pundits-who perpetually agitate for change and reform-maybe the best course is to continue to make our best arguments but await more patiently the public's judgment. As a system, democracy is neither quick nor efficient, but it hasn't stopped working yet.

Dick Kirschten is a contributing editor for National Journal.

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