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

was, perhaps, less likely to turn to an administrative strategy.
Nonetheless, he did employ some of its aspects, particularly in his use of appointees and in the regulatory realm. In terms of his appointees, according to Chase Untermeyer, Bush's Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) director, the new president "'wanted to make clear this was a new administration, not Ronald Reagan's third term, but George Bush's first"' (Aberbach 1991, 239). While it was said that Bush initially kept at least 50

 

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percent of Reagan's appointees, many of these appointees were originally his people within the Reagan administration. Apparently, Bush had been successful in getting Reagan to appoint many of his campaign workers to administration positions, particularly in the second Reagan administration.
When George Bush came into office there was a rather determined effort to relocate those former non-Bush Reagan appointees who did stay on in the administration. With "Old faces in new places, new faces in old places" as the working motto of the PPO, the remaining Reagan appointees were shifted around to other agencies. One PAS in the Bush PAS interviews mentioned that he was the only Reagan PAS to be left in his incumbent position in the new Bush administration.
Those Independent Regulatory Commission (IRC) members who chaired their agency under Reagan (and who, by statute, Bush could not dismiss or reassign) were removed from the chair and generally ignored, according to one IRC PAS interviewee; there were to be no Reagan people left heading Bush administration agencies. The Bush administration was successful in this effort, leaving many Reagan people feeling somewhat abused or at least misused, according to this PAS who characterized Bush and his people as "rude and crude."
Another of Bush's administrative strategies was in the regulatory, or rather, deregulatory realm. He first moved to delay implementation of regulations and to eviscerate the agencies' independent power to promulgate regulations not mandated by Congress. In his State of the Union address in 1992 he issued and later extended an executive order mandating a moratorium on all new agency regulations.
He then moved to strengthen the Competitiveness Council, headed by Vice President Dan Quayle. This council had the power to supersede regulations promulgated by any of the executive agencies if it felt they would be bad for American businesses. With such a broad mandate there was plenty of room for conflict between the White House and the agencies and, of course, between the White House and the Congress. The EPA, for example, was a highly visible target of the Competitiveness Council's fire. In fact, as of the fall of 1992, the council or OMB had held up some seventy-six regulations the agency proposed, some in violation of deadlines established by the Congress. Thanks to the council's decrees, the EPA had missed forty-six deadlines in the Clean Air Act by October 1992. As one careerist observed, "The climate at the White House has been to do nothing. It stops regulators. It makes regulators question every step they take. It's chilled their work." It also led to numerous lawsuits against the EPA for violating the law by not creating regulations to implement laws passed by the Congress.

 

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While this council existed in a previous incarnation in Reagan's administration under then-Vice President Bush, it had a much lower profile as the Task Force on Regulation. President Bush, as committed to deregulation as Reagan and spurred on by Vice President Quayle, elevated its status and power. However, when the council flexed its muscles to undercut the authority of the agencies to implement legislation, it drew heavy fire from the Democratic Congress who eliminated funding for the council in the summer of 1992 (and President Clinton abolished the council in the second week of his administration).
Bush's approach to the Congress was markedly different from that of his