Free The President's Call: Executive Leadership From FDR to George Bush by Judith E. Michaels

overtures from the Congress or other entities. He instead embraced the style, if not the content, of the activist presidency of FDR, even to the point of evoking FDR's memory in his speeches. As it was observed, Reagan adopted the approach of Wilson and Roosevelt in order to pursue the objectives of Coolidge and Harding (Salamon and Lund 1985, 22).
Some found positive elements in Reagan's administrative presidency:
it has created an elaborate new system for tracking budgetary decisionmaking in Congress so that the administration can participate in the process more effectively. It has also extended the procedures for Execu-

 

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tive Office scrutiny of regulations begun under presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, and it has taken steps to strengthen financial controls in the executive branch. It has also furthered the review of federal credit activities and accelerated the move to establish a regular credit budget. In addition, its "Cabinet Councils" have improved internal executive branch communication. Beyond that, the administration has given greater salience to the potential role that both private-sector institutions and state and local governments can play in dealing with public problems. (Ibid., 23)
However, as with Nixon, these advances came at a price.
Political Costs of Reagan's Administrative Strategy
There are strengths to the Reagan approach to political appointments: "loyalty to the president, a clearance process that touches all bases, and clear White House control of appointments in the administration." However, there are weaknesses as well, related to
slowness due to the elaborate clearance procedures, the narrowness of the pool of potential candidates (due to ideological criteria and bias against previous experience), and the large volume that must be handled by the White House personnel office since clearances extended to the lowest levels. (Pfiffner 1987a, 73-74)
Other factors slowed the Reagan appointment process, as well. Primary energy went to the legislative strategy group that was successfully moving the economic policy program through the Congress. "The disclosure requirements of the 1978 Ethics Act had to be applied for the first time [and] the Presidential Personnel Office was deficient in staff and operations" (Newland 1983, 4).
Pressure from the Republican right wing also slowed the Reagan screening and appointment process, as mentioned. It charged that many of the candidates had not supported Reagan soon enough and were "retreads" from previous Republican administrations (Pfiffner 1987a, 73).
The ideological battles over appointments and the elaborate clearance procedures resulted in significant delays in staffing the administration. Despite claims that the administration was making major appointments faster than Presidents Carter or Kennedy, the National Journal reported that after 10 weeks Reagan had submitted to the Senate 95, as compared to Carter's 142 nominations. Time calculated that, as of the first week in May, of the top 400 officials, only 55 percent had been announced, 35 per-

 

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cent formally nominated, and 21 percent actually confirmed. (Ibid., 73-74)
Another result of the Reagan ideological litmus test was that significant numbers of the appointees had no previous government experience. Of those confirmed as of late June 1981, "59% (76 of 112) of subcabinet appointees lacked prior government experience, as did 78% (18 of 23) of those in independent agencies and 100% (seven of seven) of those in independent regulatory agencies" (Newland 1983, 3). The Bush appointees stood in marked contrast to those of the first Reagan administration, as will be discussed in later chapters. 7
Reagan's administrative strategy fell apart late in his first term as abuses by some of his appointees started to come to light. Excessive loyalty to the president, single-minded focus on his agenda, and standard-issue corruption had led some of the president's men and women outside the