The Carter presidency cannot be described-as was sometimes true of past administrations-in terms of White House loyalists versus cabinet department disloyalists. When direction is not present, they will go into business for themselves. If direction is forthcoming, they will try-successfully or not-to honor a president’s wishes. Political executives and high level civil servants prefer to be loyal to a president. Ironically, Carter’s procedures assure, by definition, that he cannot deal with the nation’s ills comprehensively. Usually this is done by BOGSAT-the acronym for a “bunch of guys sitting around a table.” In other cases, where political executives have not been given some framework in which to function, they will try to impose their own hidden agendas on the president.Įach departmental proposal-whether for welfare reform or tax reform-may or may not be “right,” but there is no reason to expect that automatically it will fall in place with what other departments will be proposing. When a president lacks an overriding design for what he wants government to do, his department chiefs are forced to prepare presidential options in a vacuum. And good processes can produce conflicting, competing and confusing programs. Some past presidents made a fetish of chaos in policy development, often resulting in proposals that had not been fully explored.īut process is only a tool for getting from here to there-it is not a substitute for substance. Senior Fellow Emeritus - Governance StudiesĪ concern for process is not a bad thing. I would like to put forward another theory: The root of the problem is that Jimmy Carter is the first Process President in American history. And it cannot be accounted for by most of the explanations currently in vogue, such as: Carter’s an outsider who really doesn’t understand the levers of national governance or Carter surrounds himself with a “Georgia Mafia” whose weaknesses are the same as his own or Carter is a bad manager who hasn’t been able to sort out decisions that a president must make from those that should be settled at lower levels or Congress is so uncontrollable that it will not allow any president to exercise the reins of leadership or the bureaucracy has grown beyond the span of presidential control or many of the nation’s problem’s are highly intractable or even all these reasons taken together-although there is truth in all. How, then, can a president-certainly no less mentally alert than most past presidents-with many advisers of high caliber, produce such an undistinguished presidency? ![]() Assume, moreover, that he has appointed to his cabinet and sub-cabinet many men and women who are experienced and dedicated. ![]() Let us assume that Jimmy Carter is an intelligent, decent, hardworking man. It shows how early Carter’s flaws became apparent to eagle-eyed pundits like Mr. Hess wrote in June 1978, when Jimmy Carter was just midway through his term.
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