478 Chapter 13 | The Bureaucracysome cases, the Senate must confirm them. The majority of a president’s appointees
act as the president’s eyes, ears, and hands throughout the executive branch. They hold
positions of power within government agencies, serving as secretaries of executive
departments, agency heads, or senior deputies. Their jobs involve finding out what
the president wants from their agency and ordering, persuading, or cajoling their
subordinates to implement presidential directives.
Some appointees get their jobs as a reward for working on the president’s campaign
staff, contributing substantial funds to the campaign, or raising money from other
donors. These individuals are not always given positions with real decision-making
power. Some government agencies have the reputation of being turkey farms,
places where campaign stalwarts can be appointed without the risk that their lack
of experience will lead to bad policy.^47 In many agencies, people in the top positions
are members of the Senior Executive Service (SES), who are also exempt from civil
service restrictions.^48 As of 2018, there were a few thousand SES members, most of
whom were career government employees who held relatively high-level agency
positions before moving to the SES. This change of employment status costs them
their civil service protections but allows them to apply for senior leadership positions
in the bureaucracy. Some political appointees are also given SES positions, although
most do not have the experience or expertise held by career bureaucrats who typically
move to the SES.
President Trump’s use of political appointments raises a puzzle. At one level, his
campaign promises to undertake large-scale changes in government policy suggested
that Trump would make appointments as rapidly as possible, so that he would
have people in each agency who were loyal to him and would implement his reform
efforts. However, the pace of Trump’s appointments was slow compared to that of
previous presidents, and even after a year in office many senior-level positions in the
bureaucracy were vacant.^49 In part, appointments were slowed by Senate Democrats
who opposed Trump’s nominees. In addition, however, some potential appointees
did not want to work in a Trump-led administration. Others were dropped from
consideration because they had opposed Trump during the 2016 campaign. Whatever
the reason, the slow pace of appointments complicated Trump’s reform efforts.
Perhaps because of the difficulties in appointing senior-level officials in the early
months of the Trump presidency, junior individuals who had worked for Trump during
the campaign were dispatched to various executive departments and independent
agencies.^50 These individuals were chosen for their loyalty to Trump rather than their
knowledge of the agency they were assigned to. Most of them held advisory positions,
so they were not involved with day-to-day agency operations. Their job was to monitor
agency operations and to report how agency staff were responding to Trump’s
directives. However, because these individuals knew little about their agencies,
and because they had no authority to issue policy directives on their own, they were
relatively ineffective in implementing the Trump agenda.turkey farms
Agencies to which campaign workers
and donors can be appointed in
reward for their service because
it is unlikely that their lack of
qualifications will lead to bad policy.“Why
Should
I Care?”
The problem of control shapes the kinds of people who are hired as bureaucrats
as well as their job protections. Political appointees and members of the SES are
supposed to ride herd on the rest of the bureaucracy. Civil service protections
exist to ensure that bureaucrats’ decisions reflect expertise rather than political
considerations.Full_14_APT_64431_ch13_454-487.indd 478 16/11/18 1:44 PM