Persuader In Chief

For most of us, the “separation of powers” refers to the fact that our federal government is divided into three branches.

There is also another version of the separation of powers, which is the subject of Peter W. Rodman’s recently published Presidential Command. What could be a more fitting read for President’s Day?

While the president is commander in chief, the executive branch of the federal government is divided into numerous agencies. A non-cooperative agency may be tougher on a president than a Senate filibuster.

Rodman's thesis is simple. The federal government is hard to manage. The problem is not that federal employees are incompetent or unmotivated. Nor is it that federal programs are inherently complicated. Social security – a hundred billion dollar program – runs on a formula.

What makes the job difficult is the fact that presidents have direct control over hardly anyone. Apart from a few hundred White House staffers – otherwise known as “temps,” – the overwhelming majority of federal employees report to a superior within a federal department.

When a President wants a federal agency to act he must direct the effort through the agency’s head. When a federal effort requires more than one agency – say ridding Afghanistan from opium – the President must rely upon several agency heads to carry out the desired policy.

Rodman provides a series of examples to illustrate how different presidents have dealt with real or perceived challenges from within the executive branch.

Here are just a few of the take-aways:

• President Truman liked to make decisions and believed that his responsibilities as President prevented him from allowing subordinates to take charge. When Congress created the National Security Council to advise the President, he took to calling it his council. It is no surprise that the State Department’s opposition to Truman’s decision to recognize the state of Israel hardly mattered to him. “The civil servant, the general or admiral, the foreign service officer,” Truman later wrote, “has no authority to make policy.”
• A career military officer, President Eisenhower expected a regular planning process. He scheduled weekly meetings with his NSC, and rarely missed one. At the same time, Eisenhower did not delegate the work of policy formulation, but led with a “hidden hand” as a result of his skillful management of the executive bureaucracy.
• Aware of the perception that Eisenhower was overly reliant on consensus, J.F.K. sought to revitalize the presidency by placing brilliant policymakers at the White House while matching them with weak leaders at the federal agencies. The spirit of Camelot held that the thinking at the departments was woefully inadequate. The fiasco at the Bay of Pigs proved the point. “The first lesson was never to rely on the experts,” concluded Kennedy confidant Arthur Schlesinger.
• While possessing “the shrewdest strategic judgment of any modern president,” Nixon was withdrawn and not a natural executive. His leadership style was to tighten his control over the implementation of the policies he deemed most critical – among them, the historic rapprochement with China.
• President Reagan understood that the president was uniquely positioned to speak directly to other heads of state. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” President Reagan insisted in formulating his principles in clear terms – “evil empire” – while supporting diplomatic efforts at achieving a lasting peace with the now extinct Soviet Union.

Rodman knows well of what he writes. Five presidents had the honor of his service before leukemia cut Rodman’s life short last summer. He was 64. Those who never had the privilege of meeting Rodman will wish they had after reading Presidential Command. Henry Kissinger remembered his former student and advisor as a man of "towering character and intelligence." Rodman's reputation as a gifted policy analyst - a model public servant and counselor - will only increase as a result of his final published work.

As with Charles Murray’s Real Education, I read Presidential Command from the vantage point of an officer in the U.S. Marines. And as in the case of Real Education, it turns out that the U.S. military is already making one of the author’s central points.

Rodman contends that the president must lean forward into an uncertain world. Policies must be consistent, timely, purposeful and faithfully implemented:

“The policy machinery will simply not work without effective control over it.”

But the structural problem mentioned earlier persists. While ultimately controlled by the President, the federal agencies operate apart from each other. The crises that face the nation, however, require joint operations between members from various parts of the federal government.

To see how this might work, the American people might look to the U.S. military.

“Jointedness” has become standard throughout our armed forces. Since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1987, the heads of each service branch are now responsible for training and equipping their personnel. When service members are deployed, they fall under the operational control of a theater commander. This permits the commander in theater to carry out the mission when the mission requires personnel from different military branches.

Operations since 9/11 have only further emphasized the vital importance of joint operations. Today’s culture of jointedness runs deep. The Department of Defense has recently implemented an updated system for linking joint assignments with professional advancement. Within the U.S. military, this prevents officers from developing allegiances to their own branches at the expense of developing the skills necessary for winning the long war.

Jointedness among our federal civilian agencies promises similar benefits. It would permit a public servant dedicated to energy conservation to work today with E.P.A. and tomorrow with State or Treasury – all the while focused on the same mission.

From the commander in chief’s perspective, it would mean that interagency operations could be performed by placing the personnel from separate departments under a manager that was not the necessary head of one of the agencies involved. Bureaucratic turf wars would be bypassed. In addition, presidents would have an alternative to relying only on the efforts of loyal departments at the expense of straining their resources.

A savvy administration might then ask Congress to give it the power to manage the federal government by mandating interagency coordination under the law.

Would Congress be willing? Would the American people favor it? If the answer is no, then at least we will know that the public is happy with the government working the way it does.