Shadow Cabinets

Paul Light has a typically smart op-ed in today's New York Times on the impact of not making presidential appointments quickly, and not getting them confirmed. The Washington Post has an application running to track the appointments the Obama administration has made so far and how far those appointments have gotten through the confirmations process. The Obama team isn't actually moving through the appointments process more slowly than other administrations, but as Light writes, these are extraordinary times, when the appointment process needs to move faster:

At the Treasury Department, for example, the Senate has confirmed only one appointee, but Secretary Timothy Geithner is hardly alone. He has an at-will chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, press officer, three special counselors and 50 at-will appointees working in his executive suite. Mr. Geithner has no choice but to bulk up on at-will functionaries if he wants to keep Treasury running, but these appointees will still be making decisions long after the Senate confirms the deputy secretary and various undersecretaries, inspectors general and assistant secretaries who will make up his formal subcabinet. Once the de facto subcabinet is in place, it is nearly impossible to dismantle.

Mr. Byrd should not underestimate the impact of this de facto subcabinet on the federal government’s performance. Under President George W. Bush, at-will appointees were responsible for the politicization of the Justice Department’s civil service hiring process, the suppression of scientific evidence at the Environmental Protection Agency and the woeful response to Hurricane Katrina by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This is also an argument for simply cutting the number of political appointees. But that's a long-term reform, and given that Obama has to make these appointments, the Senate should be moving quickly on the president's choices and making decisions on the merits. If we're genuinely worried about the impact of de-facto appointees, and if we care about the major government programs being developed, in particular at Treasury, getting the right people in place, the right way, matters.