OBAMA'S LEGION OF POLITICAL APPOINTEES

November 10, 2008

With the United States in the middle of two wars and a serious financial crisis, President-elect Barack Obama is moving quickly to establish his transition team and get about the business of nominating political appointees. Much attention is rightly paid to senior White House staff and cabinet secretaries. It’s the thousands of other people Obama will appoint and how well he manages them, however, that ultimately will determine the success or failure of the new president’s agenda.

With Democrats in control of Congress the process of nominating and approving top leaders in the new administration should go swiftly. Only assistant secretaries and above require Senate confirmation. But there are well over a thousand deputy, under, deputy under, assistant, deputy assistant, and assistant deputy under secretaries to appoint, not including a few thousand more political appointees who don’t have the word secretary in their title. It takes months to put them all in place.

Unlike January 1993, when Bill Clinton took office, there is a solid corps out there of experienced, capable Democratic office holders from Clinton’s eight years in office. Then, Democrats had controlled the White House for only 4 of the previous 24 years. There will be fewer novices in the Obama administration than there were in Clinton’s. Still, many, if not most, of Obama’s appointees will be new to the executive branch.

Appointees in the new administration will come from a variety of sources. Besides people who served in the Clinton administration, ambitious Capitol Hill staffers from committees that oversee the various departments of government are eager for executive leadership experience in those departments. Academics will take sabbaticals, serve in government, then return to their institutions to teach and write about their experiences. Retired military officers provide an excellent pool of experienced leaders. Politically active people from the private sector will be drawn to the challenge. Many of these people will have worked in Obama’s campaign. The vast majority of them sincerely want to serve their country.

Obama's new, more stringent ethics requirements notwithstanding, there's no shortage of talent willing to serve. It’s who the new administration selects to be their agents of change and how they perform when they come face to face with the bureaucracy that's important. The vast majority of political appointees involved in policy making aren’t selected for their management or leadership abilities. They are selected for their loyalty and commitment to the new president’s agenda and for their positions and ideas on issues important to the new administration.

First timers arrive in their new offices where career senior executive managers and civil servants have been working hard on the issues and policies of the previous administration. The new appointees' first tasks, in short order, are to figure out what they are supposed to be doing, how to navigate their department’s bureaucracy, and how policy is really made and executed.

Policy pronouncements have little meaning if you can’t execute them. Making things happen when others don’t want them to is what it’s all about. Only a small fraction of policy proposals require legislative action. The vast majority are carried out within the purview of the executive branch under authorities delegated by the president. Understanding those authorities and how to use them is the key to a new political appointee’s success.

There's chaos enough that these positions turn over at the same time. In every new administration the problem is compounded by the hard-core zealots who distrust the bureaucracy and believe they have to subjugate it. Like 19th-century Christian missionaries out to convert native tribes, expecting them to instantly accept the new religion, they want the bureaucracy to turn on a dime and bow to their will. Most of these people will wash out after a year or two when they're revealed as ineffective, but some hang on until the very end.

To be sure, there are plenty of smart, articulate men and women who break the code early on and inspire the people under them to follow their lead. They have the trust and confidence of their superiors and they know how to get things done. I’ve had the privilege and the pleasure or working for many such people from both political parties. Unfortunately, there are never enough of them.

Further compounding the challenges facing the Obama administration is what has happened to the Washington policy-making establishment over the past twenty years. Under Republicans and Democrats alike decision-making has become increasingly bottlenecked. Working groups, committees, and offices that must coordinate on policy proposals before they reach decision-makers have multiplied exponentially. Policy proposals that once only took days to reach cabinet secretaries and even the president now regularly take weeks, even months. Everyone knows it's a problem, but no one seems to know how to fix it.

High-profile initiatives, like those associated with the financial crises and that require legislation, can move quickly. Hundreds of others, however, will become mired in debates about priorities, which office has the lead, and what format memoranda should use. Only exceptional executive leadership from the top will bring order out of chaos.

On January 20, 2009, the Obama administration will take the reins of government fired up and ready to implement “change." The American people and the media will watch them closely, focusing principally on the president, his senior White House staff, and his cabinet secretaries, who will do their best to present an image of harmony, efficiency, and progress. Behind them, out of the limelight, a legion of political appointees will struggle mightily with the bureaucracy and themselves to steer a new course and keep the ship of state from running aground.