The powers that shouldn't be; five Washington insiders the next Democratic president shouldn't hire

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1987 by Paul Glastris

The Powers that Shouldn't Be

Given he was garnering about 2 percent in national polls, it may have seemed a bit premature for former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt to have started naming possible cabinet appointments last July. During a Democratic candidates deate in Houston, Babbitt decided that for his quest to be taken seriously, it might help to drop some serious names. So right then, only 480 shopping days before the election, he rattled off a list of Washington's finest, including Robert "Mr. Democrat' Strauss and Warren Christopher, Jimmy Carter's deputy secretary of state and a certified member of the foreign policy establishment. Babbitt's press secretary, Mike McCurry, explains the Christopher choice: "It was a way of communicating to inside the Beltway. Hey, I have some sense of how things move in Washington, I'm no hick governor with straw coming out of my ears.''

Babbitt inadvertently let the TV audience in on what political junkies have been all too aware of: the other campaign, the one for federal jobs. It's already well under way. Candidates are trying to attract big-name advisers and, just as important, would-be appointees have begun campaigning aggressively for post-season jobs. Like the unknown governor yearning for the presidency, the aspiring cabinet secretary must start early if he or she wants to stand out.

When Gary Hart was the front-runner, the seekers clamored to get close to his senior aides. "As the Hart campaign was warming up there were people trying to elbow their way in, some with very sharp elbows,' Richard E. Feinberg, a foreign policy adviser to Hart, told The New York Times. Hart's exit affected this other campaign as much as it did the one for the nomination. Now the seekers have spread out. Super-lobbyist Anne Wexler is a top adviser to Michael Dukakis, James Schlesinger is whispering in Richard Gephardt's ear, Robert Strauss is simply everywhere, and hundreds of lesser knowns have fanned out to the candidates of their choice. "How do people do it?' said Feinberg. "By ingratiating themselves with senior advisers, by writing unsolicited memoranda, providing either advice on campaigning or specific issues, by offering to organize a briefing session on a subject.' Or they pound out opinion pieces, angle for a few precious minutes on "Nightline,' or attend conferences. Lots of them. The conferences of choice this year have been those of the Washington-based Center for National Policy. The Center has become a sort of employment agency for the government-in-waiting, just as the Trilateral Commission and the Industrial Policy Study Group were in previous elections.

Insiders know the they'd better campaign now because competition becomes frenzied during the ten-week transition period after the election. The clawing and climbing of job seekers has been so frenetic during past transitions as to evoke Stephen King descriptions from officials involved: "a black morass,' "a whirlwind,' "thunder clouds and lightning,' "that tidal wave,' "that avalanche, that onslaught.'

Presidents, in part to avoid the stampede, often choose people they know and trust, a formula that can backfire in the form of a Bert Lance or Frank Moore. Although less known than Lance, Moore was perhaps more damaging. Carter put him in charge of the White House congressional liaison office because Moore had done such a fine job lobbying the Georgia legislature when Carter was governor. But Moore was as much of a Washington neophyte as Carter; many of the administration's legislative initiatives stumbled over Moore's inexperience--"as disaster' is how one top Carter aide describes Moore's tenure aide describes Moore's tenure.

Presidents will also make cabinet-level selections that satisfy the demands of the department's constituencies. Reagan selected James Watt to be secretary of interior to please Western politicians like Senator Alan Simpson and Western business interests like the National Coal Association, whose president bubbled at the time, "We're deliriously happy.' (Reagan, who at first shared the sentiment, eventually stopped smiling when Watt became the administration's chief liability.)

To dispel the impression they'd make appointments of the caliber of Lance, Moore, or Watt, candidates have made an equally perilous mistake: relying on respectable Washington insiders.

There are, of course, some talented people in Washington institutions like Congress, the thinktanks and law firms. But too often they have investments in the same failed policies that new administrations are supposedly elected to overturn. Outsiders might lack government experience, but insiders are more likely to be blind to ideas percolating in the rest of the country. Take Carter's appointment of Joseph Califano, a veteran bureaucrat of the Kennedy-Johnson years, as his secretary of health, education and welfare. When Carter's Labor Department tried pushing a welfare reform program tied to a work requirement, Califano argued that people on welfare were "functionally illiterate unemployables.' Carter pointed out that he had plenty of capable employees on his farm who could operate forklifts but couldn't sign their names--just the sort of common sense you're more likely to pick up on a peanut farm than on the banks of the Potomac. Califano continued to advocate that old liberal warhorse, a guaranteed national income, which doomed the welfare reform initiative Carter had made such a high priority.