The People Behind the Presidential Bully Pulpit
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2015 The People Behind the Presidential Bully Pulpit Kara Susan Alaimo Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/516 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The People Behind the Presidential Bully Pulpit by Kara S. Alaimo A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 © 2015 Kara Susan Alaimo All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in satisfaction of the dissertation requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Stanley Renshon _____________ ______________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Alyson Cole _____________ _____________________________________ Date Executive Officer Stanley Renshon Thomas Halper David Jones Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract The People Behind the Presidential Bully Pulpit by Kara S. Alaimo Adviser: Professor Stanley Renshon “The People Behind the Presidential Bully Pulpit” argues that civil servants best serve the interests of both the President of the United States and the American people as public affairs officers in the Department of the Treasury. Using interviews conducted with political appointees who served as Treasury spokespeople during the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, civil servants who served in public affairs for the Treasury, and Treasury reporters who interacted frequently with the government officials, the study finds that civil servants better advance the goals of the President in the press than the political appointees personally selected by the President. This is the case because civil servants have greater knowledge of the policies they advocate and because reporters apply greater skepticism to the arguments of political appointees because reporters assume that appointees are always attempting to advance political agendas – a phenomenon this study calls the “appointee discount.” While scholars have previously argued that presidents accept the lower competence iv of appointees in order to attain their greater loyalty, this study suggests that no such tradeoff exists. It finds that political appointees and civil servants leak information to the press that does not serve the interests of the President with roughly the same frequency. The study also finds that civil servants better serve the interests of the American people in such roles. The study finds that neither political appointees nor civil servants in the Treasury’s public affairs department are conducting the “permanent campaign” to build support for the President that White House aides have been accused of practicing, by governing based upon public opinion polls and appealing to the emotions, as opposed to the reason, of the American people. However, political appointees are significantly more likely to withhold information requested by reporters than civil servants. v Acknowledgments I am much obliged to the current and former government officials and reporters who graciously shared their time and experiences with me. This project would not have been possible without them. Thank you to my dissertation committee: Professors Stanley Renshon, Thomas Halper, and David Jones. Thanks to Ed Walsh for helping me connect with the Bush administration appointees. I am also grateful to Mark Prendergast, Jorge Montalvo, Jill Hamburg Coplan, Peter Beinart, and Susan Alaimo for early feedback on my research design. Thank you to the American Political Science Association’s Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs, which hosted me as a Visiting Scholar while I worked on this project. My sister and brother-in-law, Christina and Jason Miller, welcomed me into their home outside Washington and didn’t blink when I announced that I would not be leaving until I found twenty-four government officials and reporters to talk to me. I couldn’t ask for better friends. Thank you as well to my colleagues at the Graduate Center, Lucia Green-Weiskel, Paul Alois, Brandon Aultman, and Gary Rancier, whose support helped me juggle graduate school and my own career in political communication. Finally and especially, thanks to my mother, Susan Alaimo, who has always encouraged me to pursue my dreams. Before I read A Government of Strangers, she read me I Can Be Anything When I Grow Up. The book didn’t mention a Doctor of Philosophy, but I knew just what she meant. vi Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Literature Review: Political Appointees vs. the Bureaucracy 16 Chapter 2: Literature Review: Public Affairs Officers in Government Agencies 62 Chapter 3: Theories and Research Design 104 Chapter 4: Results: Efficacy of Appointees vs. Civil Servants 138 Chapter 5: Results: Loyalty of Appointees vs. Civil Servants 210 Chapter 6: Results: The Permanent Campaign 239 Chapter 7: Conclusions and Implications 314 Appendix A: Interview Questions 340 Appendix B: Bush Appointee 5 347 Bibliography 351 Autobiographical Statement 392 vii Introduction The Politicization of the American Presidency Though the U.S. Constitution is silent on the subject of the bureaucracy, which did not grow until the 19th century, in The Federalist #72 Alexander Hamilton laid out a dilemma for staffing the government that presidents have grappled with ever since. On the one hand, Hamilton argued, the actual conduct of foreign negotiations, the preparatory plans of finance, the application and disbursement of the public moneys in conformity to the general appropriations of the legislature, the arrangement of the army and navy, the directions of the operations of war – these, and other matters of a like nature, constitute what seems to be most properly understood by the administration of government. The persons, therefore, to whose immediate management these different matters are committed, ought to be considered as the assistants or deputies of the chief magistrate, and on this account, they ought to derive their offices from his appointment, at least from his nomination, and ought to be subject to his superintendence. By this line of argument, presidents of the United States should rely heavily on political appointees – staffers who the chief executive personally appoints and is free to dismiss at any time. On the other hand, Hamilton warned that the propensity of the president to reverse the policies of his predecessor, combined with “the influence of personal confidences and attachments, would be likely to induce every new President to promote a change of men to fill 1 the subordinate stations; and these causes together could not fail to occasion a disgraceful and ruinous mutability in the administration of the government.” (Hamilton, Madison and Jay 1987, 412-413). By this argument, presidents should rely more heavily on civil servants – staffers who enjoy protection from dismissal for political reasons and serve across administrations, bringing needed continuity and stability to the government. The balance that American presidents have struck between appointees and civil servants has varied. President Andrew Jackson famously claimed that “the duties of all public officers are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance” – and went on to create a vast spoils system to reward party supporters with government posts (Rourke 1984, 17). Calls for reform of the patronage system reached a crescendo following the 1881 assassination of President Garfield by a disappointed job seeker. In 1883, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act created a civil service system to select employees for federal posts based upon the results of competitive exams and protect employees from being fired for political reasons. However, modern-day presidents have shifted the pendulum back in the direction of Hamilton’s first hand. The number of federal political appointees increased steadily during the 1950s-1980s, while overall government employment decreased relative to the U.S. population (Richardson and Pfiffner 1999, 179). While the number of appointees has remained relatively stable since the 1980s, today, an incoming president fills almost 4,000 jobs – double the number of positions as during the middle of the 20th century (Lewis 2012, 587; Lewis 2011, 48-49). Scholars refer to the phenomenon of the increased number of political appointees serving in the federal government today as the “politicization” of the American presidency (Lewis 2008, 3). While political appointments remain a tiny fraction of the federal workforce, the 2 American system nevertheless stands in marked contrast to that of nearly every other mature democracy. For example, an incoming British prime minister, German chancellor, or French president would make about 100-200 appointments (ibid., 2). The increased use of appointment power is one part of a larger strategy pursued by American presidents since Nixon to exert increased control over the executive branch – an effort that Richard Nathan famously dubbed the “administrative