James Rosen: Cronyism's Roots Go Deep In U.S. History
The fading furor over former FEMA chief Michael Brown and the fresh consternation over President Bush's Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers have reignited an age-old American debate over cronyism in the White House.
Brown and Miers join a long and colorful line of presidential pals extending far back in U.S. history - to the constitutional framers who tried to guard against presidents giving friends or relatives cushy jobs by requiring Senate confirmation of "principle officers" of the government.
"Administration jobs are a way of rewarding campaign workers and, in more recent years, people who raise a lot of money," said David Lewis, a political science professor and expert on bureaucracies at Princeton University. "All presidents appoint cronies. The difference is that not all of them are publicly exposed the way Michael Brown was."
...
Many presidents have been accused of putting friendships or family ties ahead of national interests.
In "A Thousand Days," Arthur M. Schlesinger described President Kennedy's decision to make his brother Robert F. Kennedy attorney general: "Though nearly all the advice to both brothers was against the idea, he called Bobby over for breakfast one morning and told him that he would have to take the job," Schlesinger wrote. "When (former Washington Post editor) Ben Bradlee later asked Kennedy how he proposed to announce his brother's appointment, he said, 'Well, I think I'll open the front door of the Georgetown house some morning about 2:00 a.m., look up and down the street, and, if there's no one there, I'll whisper, "It's Bobby." ' "
Evan Thomas' biography "Bobby Kennedy" has an account of a Jan. 20, 1961, dinner exchange on the topic soon after John Kennedy had been inaugurated.
"I don't know why people are so mad at me for making Bobby attorney general," JFK quipped. "I just wanted to give him a little legal practice before he becomes a lawyer."
President Truman was so well-known for handing out jobs to his Missouri friends that his Republican foe in the 1952 election campaign ran on the slogan of "Korea, corruption and communism."
Truman named one World War I buddy, Harry Vaughan, his military attache and made him a general. The two joined other Truman pals in poker games where they smoked cigars and drank whiskey.
While he has plenty of historical company in looking out for his friends, according to some analysts, Bush has taken cronyism to a new level.
In order to do a statistical comparison of the Bush and Clinton administrations, Lewis, the Princeton political scientist, used a thick volume that is highly prized on Capitol Hill. Known widely as "the Plum Book," it is a government publication of senior posts with the formal title, "United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions."
In 2004, the fourth year of Bush's presidency, there were 3,202 political appointees to jobs outside civil-service laws or restraints, according to Lewis. That was a 12.7 percent increase from the 2,845 such jobs in 2000 during the eighth and final year of Clinton's administration.
[Editor's Note: The original piece is much longer. Please see the Sacramento Bee for more.]
Brown and Miers join a long and colorful line of presidential pals extending far back in U.S. history - to the constitutional framers who tried to guard against presidents giving friends or relatives cushy jobs by requiring Senate confirmation of "principle officers" of the government.
"Administration jobs are a way of rewarding campaign workers and, in more recent years, people who raise a lot of money," said David Lewis, a political science professor and expert on bureaucracies at Princeton University. "All presidents appoint cronies. The difference is that not all of them are publicly exposed the way Michael Brown was."
...
Many presidents have been accused of putting friendships or family ties ahead of national interests.
In "A Thousand Days," Arthur M. Schlesinger described President Kennedy's decision to make his brother Robert F. Kennedy attorney general: "Though nearly all the advice to both brothers was against the idea, he called Bobby over for breakfast one morning and told him that he would have to take the job," Schlesinger wrote. "When (former Washington Post editor) Ben Bradlee later asked Kennedy how he proposed to announce his brother's appointment, he said, 'Well, I think I'll open the front door of the Georgetown house some morning about 2:00 a.m., look up and down the street, and, if there's no one there, I'll whisper, "It's Bobby." ' "
Evan Thomas' biography "Bobby Kennedy" has an account of a Jan. 20, 1961, dinner exchange on the topic soon after John Kennedy had been inaugurated.
"I don't know why people are so mad at me for making Bobby attorney general," JFK quipped. "I just wanted to give him a little legal practice before he becomes a lawyer."
President Truman was so well-known for handing out jobs to his Missouri friends that his Republican foe in the 1952 election campaign ran on the slogan of "Korea, corruption and communism."
Truman named one World War I buddy, Harry Vaughan, his military attache and made him a general. The two joined other Truman pals in poker games where they smoked cigars and drank whiskey.
While he has plenty of historical company in looking out for his friends, according to some analysts, Bush has taken cronyism to a new level.
In order to do a statistical comparison of the Bush and Clinton administrations, Lewis, the Princeton political scientist, used a thick volume that is highly prized on Capitol Hill. Known widely as "the Plum Book," it is a government publication of senior posts with the formal title, "United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions."
In 2004, the fourth year of Bush's presidency, there were 3,202 political appointees to jobs outside civil-service laws or restraints, according to Lewis. That was a 12.7 percent increase from the 2,845 such jobs in 2000 during the eighth and final year of Clinton's administration.
[Editor's Note: The original piece is much longer. Please see the Sacramento Bee for more.]