If you happened to hear about the report that the Inspector General at the Department of Justice released about the politicization inside the Justice hiring process, you probably are as appalled as some of the leading newspapers. At the Washington Post, their story quotes Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy who referred to the report as "troubling," versus the story at the New York Times which gets a quote from House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, who said the partisans at Justice were "putting politics where it doesn't belong." In fact, choose your news source, and nearly all the stories are the same, all fitting the same narrative of a problem that is germane only to the Bush administration and one that fits into a pattern of unilateral abuse of the laws and the Constitution.
The thing is that what the IG Report found as a problem is nothing more than an extension of bureaucratic politicization that stretches all the way back to the Nixon administration, who wanted to neutralize the "New Deal" controlled bureaucracy in order to get his policies moving forward. The Carter administration ushered through the Congress, and then signed the "Civil Service Reform Act of 1978" that allowed the president to set aside a number of appointments--at the top of key agencies--of individuals who not only answered to the president but also had incentives to make sure that the president's political objectives were realized.
It was the Reagan administration, however, that was by far the most overt--and most successful (at the time)--in moving the bureaucracy closer to the White House. For instance, before Reagan took office in 1981, his transition team established a litmus test for anyone applying to work in the administration. They wanted to make sure that every conceivable position where they had latitude over hiring was given to a true believer. The criteria for hiring? According to the two men in charge of hiring, Pendelton James and Lyn Nofziger, the candidate was asked:
1. Are you a Carter appointee? If so, you're rejected.
2. Are you a Democrat who didn't work for Ronald Reagan? If so, you're rejected.
3. Are you a Republican? Are you the best Republican for the job?
4. Are you a Ronald Reagan-George Bush supporter?
5. Did you work in the Reagan-Bush campaign? How early before the convention?
6. Are you the best qualified person for the job? But that's only number 6.
As Ed Meese, who would eventually be Reagan's attorney general in the second term (and the one who oversaw the push to make the signing statement a strategic weapon) remarked on this vetting process: "We sought to ensure that all political appointees in the agencies were vetted through the White House personnel process, and to have a series of orientation seminars for all high ranking officials on the various aspects of the Reagan program. We wanted our appointees to be the President's ambassadors to the agencies, not the other way around."
President Reagan would also issue two key executive orders that gave the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs inside the Office of Management and Budget the power to make life miserable for any bureaucrat--political or career--who failed to live up to the Reagan vision. This enabled the "president and his agents to monitor and influence the substance of individual regulations." In essence, it established administrative clearance of any and all regulations. By the end of the Reagan administration, the entire bureaucratic apparatus was now highly sensitive to the political position of the president. It simply was not worth the effort to try to end run the White House. And despite the attempts of Congress to assert itself inside the bureaucracy, the truth of the matter was that each successive administration moved the bureaucracy much closer to the White House, leaving Congress with losing ground with each passing year.
The Clinton administration continued the efforts of its Republican predecessors. It enhanced the Reagan executive orders, it used a variety of unilateral devices (the signing statement, proclamation, executive orders, treaty obligations, etc.) and pretty much dominated the Republicans in Congress who were unable to combat how Clinton flew solo when he could not get the Congress to come along, leaving Clinton domestic policy adviser Paul Begala to conclude: "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Pretty cool."
Thus the Bush II administration came to power, and it simply extended the reach of the president even further than his predecessors. So after we are finished reading these various accounts, what should be the questions we ask? I think we should start first with a look at how we got here, because that will only help us understand why this happened and then to allow us to think about how we prevent it in the future. Because you can be sure of one thing. This OIG report is only a short term loss. This administration and the candidates running around the country are already thinking about how they will stretch their tentacles throughout the bureaucracy to compensate for the moments when Congress simply won't go along with the president's vision.
