The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (23 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Page 71
BOB, partisan politicization increased, . . . and policy influence began to slip away from the BOB. (Ibid., 138)
BOB's role as a source of impartial, nonpartisan advice diminished further under Johnson, who used more policy task forces than Kennedy, many of which functioned predominantly off the record. BOB's fate was sealed under Johnson when he gave coordination of Great Society policy to two of his aides, Joseph Califano and Larry Levinson, with power to detail BOB personnel for policy roles (ibid., 138). Johnson's action indicates considerable thought and intent, as his memoirs suggest:
Previously the standard method of developing legislative programs had consisted of adopting proposals suggested by the departments and agencies of the government. The Bureau of the Budget and to a lesser degree the White House staff would analyze the suggested measures and submit them to the President. From this process derived the programs that an administration presented to the Congress. I had watched this process for years, and I was convinced that it did not encourage enough fresh or creative ideas. The bureaucracy of the government is too preoccupied with day-to-day operations, and there is a strong bureaucratic inertia dedicated to preserving the status quo. As a result, only the most powerful ideas can survive. Moreover, the cumbersome organization of government is simply not equipped to solve complex problems that cut across departmental jurisdictions. (Qtd. in ibid., 139)
His new strategy was designed to do more and to do it more quickly. While BOB's civil service workers were committed to giving budget-pruning advice and serving the institution of the presidency with neutral competence throughout Johnson's administration, Nixon introduced a new layer of political control into the agencythe program associate directors (PADs). These PADs quickly assumed great power in nearly every agency. They currently head the permanent examining divisions and are responsible for line operations, unlike the former political assistants who served as staff aides to the director on ad hoc assignments. This means that the budget-making process resides in the hands of political appointees, which further politicizes the entire budgeting process (Heclo 1977, 80).
EOP's grasp caught up with its reach during Nixon's administrative reorganization under Ehrlichman, and BOB's credibility gasped its final breath in 1970 when it became the Office of Management and Budget, "deeply layered with partisan officials, and . . . often in competition with
 
Page 72
other EOP political offices." Nixon had gone so far as to move the OMB director's office into the White House West Wing, giving him the status of presidential assistant. Its directors, George Schultz and Roy Ash, shifted from the "neutral competence" of their former role to active involvement in policy decisions (Newland 1985, 139-40).
Soon the OMB director became a key policy player. "Because no president can spend more than a fraction of his own time on management, he must depend in this aspect of his job on the skills and stature of a managerial alter ego. The Director of the Budget, since that office was created, has been the nearest thing to such a person" (Sundquist 1979, 5).
While Ford tried to depoliticize the office somewhat, Carter repoliticized OMB, thanks to his interest in budget details and in OMB's executive branch reorganization, and his close personal association with his budget director, Bert Lance. Consequently, OMB fared no better under Carter:
Every chief executive before Carter at least searched carefully for a director with the special talents and interests required to enable him to master the details of government and to act for the president in monitoring the implementation of governmental programs. Jimmy Carter did not. In appointing Bert Lance, he gave priority to considerations other than capacity for management and became the first president to bring the directorship of OMB within the ambit of home-state cronyism. Then Lance himself, instead of applying himself to learning the job of Management and Budget, became best known as the president's emissary to the business community. [Lance likewise surrounded himself with political appointees several levels down who were equally unschooled and unconcerned with knowledge of the federal government, budget or management.] . . . Of the top 10 political appointees in OMB, only one had worked in the executive branch of the federal government. (Ibid., 5)
Reagan raised the stakes by adding more political appointees to OMB, further politicizing the budget function. OMB also suffered self-inflicted wounds in Reagan's first term. Under Budget Director David Stockman, OMB cut back 20 percent of some ten thousand federal regulations and involved the office in lobbying Congress for the passage of the budget for the first time. "As it became more and more embroiled in partisan politics its credibility as the source of objective numbers plummeted" (Hess 1988, 163).
Stockman, widely termed brilliant, eventually admitted in an interview with the
Atlantic Monthly
(August 1981) that even he never really believed the numbers and budgetary projections his office was publishing.
 
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This led to even further diminution of OMB, already weakened after a decade of growing politicization. As Newland explains it: "Politicization of the OMB since the 1960s is not a matter of partisan use of reliable expert information; it is a deterioration of capacity to produce believable information due to displacement of professional expertise by political partisans at levels below the director. Reagan, with his inexperienced partisan appointees, has given a far greater unprofessional cast to OMB than Carter" (Newland 1983, 12).
Bush's OMB saw no gain in credibility. OMB Director Richard Darman, widely feared for his (domestic) agency budget cutting prowess, was intensely disliked by the right wing for his leadership in convincing the president to break the "read my lips, no new taxes" mantra that had helped get him elected.
Further, some of the Bush PASs expressed concerns about OMB career staff and the power they exerted. Said one:
Careerists play a negative role regarding PASs' ability to effect changethe career bureaucracy is the maintainer of the status quo. At OMB and my agency careerists are very entrenched, control the budget process and administration officesit goes down to GS-12. My agency deals with GSs 12 and 13 at OMB who oversee PAS testimony. PASs have to stand up to OMB careerists. Political people at OMB don't usually get involved but PASs have to escalate the conflict so politicals at OMB
do
get involvedwhen they do, they support the PASs in the agency.
Other PASs talked about the power the OMB politicals wielded in the bureaucracy. When Nixon tried the administrative strategy of cutting off the air supply (i.e., money) of disfavored agencies with budget impoundments, he was sharply cut down by the Congress. His Republican successors tried a more subtle strategy. They simply asked Congress for less money for the agency in the federal budget. This was tried with the Interstate Commerce Commission but the Democratic ICC commissioners were able to persuade the Congress to save much of their budget. Legal Services was another favorite Republican target, as was the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Vulnerability of the Personnel Function: Politicization and Depoliticization at OPM
The trend has been for heads of the central agencies, such as OMB, to become personal advisors to the president. As discussed, since 1971 OMB has been seen far more as a political ally of the president, taking on the

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