The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush (73 page)

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Authors: Judith E. Michaels

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Page 233
tion. The deference shown in the federal government is different from the deference shown to supervisors in state government and industry. There's much more movement of supervisors in the federal government.
Noted another PAS, "Career staff will accept leadership, but if you don't furnish it they will have an agenda of their ownnature abhors a vacuum."
Many PASs spoke of their trust in careerists, how much they depended on them for policy guidance, as well as to keep them informed about the culture of their own agency. One noted that he involved careerists and tried to keep them on board. "Careerists have it as a part of their culture to support the boss. I don't see careerists as Democrats or Republicans, per se. Their program identification is very high and they will tend to resist change there. My own success comes not from my political skills but from my bureaucratic skills."
Laidlaw placed responsibility for political-career relations squarely at the politicians' feet. "It's up to the political staff to set the right tone to give direction to the agency. After all, when the boat misses the harbor, it's seldom the harbor's fault."
Careerists had conflicting opinions on the quality of political-career relations in the Bush administration. Several expressed appreciation for Bush's first public appearance as president where, in a speech to the SES, he affirmed both public servants and the public service. This was in marked contrast to Ronald Reagan's bureaucrat-bashing, antigovernment campaigns that always seemed to spill over onto the civil service and its employees. As Bonosaro noted, "George Bush's support for the civil service probably permeated down to his appointees and depoliticized OPM [Office of Personnel Management]both of his OPM heads were supportive of civil service and development, as opposed to Don Devine, who served as the lightning rod to grow the professional organizations and unionshe was the perfect enemy."
Most careerists, however, while welcoming the absence of a frontal attack from the Bush administration, did not think political-career relations had improved much over Reagan. "On a scale of hostility zero to ten (ten being low), under Ronald Reagan hostility between careerists and political appointees was maybe a five, now it's maybe a six," said one highly respected careerist. As noted earlier, Bush's late 1992 campaign proposal to cut salaries for senior executives damaged his relations with careerists and will doubtless color perceptions of his administration's political-career relations in future reflections on the subject.
 
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PASs: Their Colleagues and Subordinates at Work
PASs exhibited a decided tendency to confer with their agency colleagues of all three executive categories regarding policy, budget, and staff decisions (see table 8.1).
It was clear that PASs relied heavily on their careerists. One PAS put it succinctly: "You can't develop policy without working with careerists." Indeed, most PASs did not exclude their career SES subordinates from any facet of policy making. In fact, they seemed to rely on them much more than they did on their noncareer SESs and often more than they relied on their PAS peers.
1
PASs' feelings about CSES employees prior to their first-ever PAS appointment were assessed in order to discern if actually working with careerists changed their assessment of them. They were asked to recall their opinion of careerists prior to having worked with them. Then they were asked their opinion of careerists after having worked with them.
Though their reflections were doubtless colored by time and subsequent experience, the greatest change came with those PASs who were predisposed to be positive toward the career SESthose who previously believed that SES careerists would "greatly help" them in executing their duties (31 percent). After working with careerists, that percent increased to 48 percent. This spoke well of political-career relations in the real world of everyday work, as did the rest of the survey results and the interviews with PASs, confirming their reliance on careerists for policy making.
Table 8.1. Whom Did PASs Consult Most on Policy, Budget, and Personnel Issues? (in percent)
Issue
PAS
N=170
NSES
N=154
CSES
N=169
Policy feasibility
75
62
72
Policy formulations and development
76
59
74
Policy implementation
72
63
77
Budget decisions
66
52
73
Staff selection and promotions decisions
53
45
66
Source:
The Bush PAS Survey.
 
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The SES performance plan won little praise from the PASs. It is composed of two cycles of evaluation, an annual pass/fail grading based on the individual's job description that is the basis for bonuses, and a triennial evaluation of job performance that is the basis for recertification within the SES. Beyond the minimum "C" grade acceptable for the annual review, the triennial review is expected to show above-average performance if an SES member is to retain SES ranking. An SES who does not make the grade can be returned to grade 15 or take early retirement with no loss of annuity. Good as it sounds, it was rated by only 59 percent of PASs as "generally" or "very" effective in holding CSESs accountable and by a mere 52 percent in holding NSESs accountable for their work; "a joke," said one SES.
PASs were asked to evaluate assistance rendered by the three levels of executives in their organizational unit. Although there were some minor signs of disaffection and many checked "no basis to judge/not applicable," well over two-thirds of PASs who responded rated their executive colleagues highly helpful in terms of accomplishing work tasks (see table 8.2).
While it might be expected that PASs would rely more on their political peers for relations with the Congress and more on their careerists for technical issues, it was clear that the politicals relied heavily on their careerists in every aspect of their work. There was no politics/administration dichotomy in their real-world lives.
Table 8.2. How Helpful Were PASs and SESs in Accomplishing Work Tasks? (in percent)
Task
PAS N=166
NSES N=150
CSES N=168
Mastering substantive policy details
83
86
87
Liaison with the federal bureaucracy
76
82
85
Liaison with Congress
80
74
72
Anticipating policy implementation problems
77
80
81
Handling day-to-day management tasks
69
80
86
Technical analysis of difficult issues
77
84
91
Source:
The Bush PAS Survey.
 
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The Inspectors General-the Internal GAO
The inspectors general (IGs) are a special breed of appointee, established by the 1978 Inspectors General Act. The only PASs in this study appointed to unlimited years in office, IGs are located in nearly every federal agency and perform the internal auditing function in the agencies. Their job is to identify and root out "waste, fraud, and abuse." There are sixty IGs located throughout the government; twenty-seven are political appointees at EL 3; the other thirty-three are "designated" careerists at GS levels 13 to 15, chosen by the agency head.
Agencies unused to political IGs did not always welcome them when the five newest political IGs were added in 1988. The OPM chief, for example, tried to locate her IG in a satellite building out of town, even though the law specified that they were to be housed in the agency headquarters. (Stern correspondence from OMB and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee brought the IG into the headquarters in that instance.) IGs have, however, gradually earned respect for their function, which is to seek out waste, fraud, and abuse within the agency.
Much like the PASs of the independent regulatory commissions, the political IGs are very protective of their independence. "Politics are outside the IG office," is their credo. Their function and independent reporting to Congress make the IGs the parallel in some ways to Congress's investigative arm, the General Accounting Office (GAO). IGs send a semiannual report to Congress through the agency head who may add comments but may not change their report. Because the IGs try to stay politically neutral and because the issues with which they deal are rarely entirely clear-cut, the neutrality of the IG position is crucial, and learning the careful art of compromise is essential. IGs can make enemies on either side. "Being an IG is like trying to straddle a barbed wire fence-measuring the height is what's important," said one.
Barriers to effective administration (one aspect of the nefarious Washington gridlock) show up in the experience of the IGs, thanks to the hostility between the legislative branch and the executive branch agencies inherent in divided government (and not unknown in unified government). The IGs themselves would prefer that their function be a management tool rather than a management critique, but that is difficult to achieve with a public report that goes to a Congress controlled by the other party "always looking for ways to make the executive branch agencies look bad." A negative IG report will likely bring congressional calls for a GAO audit of the IG's agency, an unhappy agency chief, and an irate

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