A few years ago I read Mordecai Lee, *Nixon's Super-Secretaries: The Last Grand Presidential Reorganization Effort* (College Station: Texas A & M University Press 2010). The subtitle indicates the theme: For decades presidents had been proposing radical reorganization of the executive branch, and for decades they had failed, because their proposals required Congress to go along, which a jealous Congress--suspicious that reorganization would strengthen a president's hand relative to it--refused to do. (Even when Congress delegated powers to the President under the Reorganization Act, they were subject to legislative veto.) The recommendations for reorganization began with Taft's Commission on Economy and Efficiency (1910-13) and continued with Harding's Joint Committee on Reorganization (1921-24), FDR's Brownlow Committee (1936-37), Truman's First Hoover Commission (1947-49), Eisenhower's Second Hoover Commission (1953-59), LBJ's Price and Heineman task forces (1964, 1966-67), and Nixon's Ash Council (1969-70).
Nixon's 1973 reorganization effort was an attempt to break with this pattern. Nixon had failed to get congressional approval for his reorganization proposals in his first term. Fresh from his landslide victory over McGovern, Nixon was determined to gain control of the bureaucracy: he saw it as being in league with the (Democratic) Congress and with interest groups that benefitted from federal programs. So besides the usual good-government and managerial arguments for grand reorganization, Nixon had political and ideological motives.
What Nixon did is explained by Lee (p. 5):
"On January 5, 1973, the president dramatically announced at a meeting for congressional leaders that he was going ahead with some of his reorganization proposals from his first term, but this time he was implementing them unilaterally by exercising his inherent presidential powers. He was reorganizing *administratively.* No advance congressional consent would be required, no laws would need to be changed, and no reorganization plan would be subject to a legislative veto under the Reorganization Act powers Congress had routinely dedicated to presidents since the Herbert Hoover administration. Nixon thus rendered Congress's powers moot. This was a de facto reorganization that the legislative branch could not stop. In one bold move Nixon was doing what almost every president since Warren Harding had been proposing to Congress and that Congress had been rejecting.
"The new reorganization plan, largely designed by Ehrlichman, created three domestic super-departments. Nixon designated the secretaries of three Cabinet departments to serve simultaneously as 'counsellors to the President,' with offices in the White House complex and sweeping powers to oversee the bureaucracy. The secretaries headed the three existing Cabinet departments that would form the core of the three domestic super-departments Nixon had proposed to Congress in his first term. He named Caspar Weinberger, secretary-designate of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), as counsellor to the president for human resources; James Lynn, secretary-designate of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as counsellor to the president for community development; and Earl Butz, secretary of the Department of Agriculture, as counsellor to the president for natural resources. The media quickly began referring to them as super-secretaries." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA5 Nixon explicitly denied that his plan provided for a "super-Cabinet." At a February 8, 1973 Cabinet meeting he said "Another issue not to be defensive about is this: I notice the columnists say we have a 'super Cabinet' and a 'regular Cabinet.' That's a lot of baloney...We have a committee of Cabinet members to coordinate matters that cut across departments, but this new system does not downgrade anybody. There is no 'super Cabinet.'" Lee remarks (p. 83): "But it was all for show. While the term 'super-Cabinet' had never been used in the planning documents for the counsellor structure or during the January 5 unveiling, that is exactly what it was. Nixon was saying one thing and meaning another."
http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA83
(On the spelling of "counsellor" Lee explains "The nomenclature 'counsellor,' spelled with the double el, deserves a brief explanation. In common American parlance, 'counsel' means a lawyer. However, since the 1940s the State Department has had a senior official at the assistant secretary level called and spelled 'counselor,' with the meaning of senior advisor. In 1969, Nixon created a new rank of senior presidential assistant called and spelled 'counsellor.' According to speechwriter Ray Price, this title signified 'ministers-without-portfolio in the Cabinet.' A *de novo* American dictionary published in 1966 explained the double-el usage as 'esp[ecially] Brit[ish].' It could be that Nixon, himself a lawyer, wanted a title that clearly differentiated legal from policy work. It could also be that he felt the British spelling was more distinguished and imlied a more elevated position." http://books.google.com/books?id=xizs6cM-gREC&pg=PA23 But newspapers almost invariably "corrected" Nixon's spelling to "counselor"...)
The super-secretaries experiment only lasted a few months. It was abandoned in May after Ehrlichman and Haldeman resigned, under fire for the Watergate cover-up. Haldeman's successor as White House chief of staff, Alexander Haig, "viewed the super-secretaries as an Ehrlichman project that no one else in the White House really cared about. The president, while having been authentically supportive of the counsellor structure, was now preoccupied with a different and much more important goal: political survival." (Lee, p. 6). http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA6
What I would like to ask here is, Suppose Watergate had not forced an end to the super-secretaries experiment? How would it have worked out? Obviously, it is difficult to say, given that the experiment lasted for less than five months. But Lee attempts an evaluation on whether the reorganization did show some promise of meeting the political and management goals Nixon set for it:
(1) Nixon's first political goal was to get more control over the executive branch. Lee argues that "It appears that, had the experiment lasted longer, the counsellors would have helped assert presidential control over federal departments and agencies. The strongest indication comes from Weinberger's counsellor activities. He created three active subcommittees that met regularly (at first every two weeks, then monthly) and consisted of the working-level bureaucrats for that policy area. Rather than the sometimes figurehead secretaries, his subcommittee membership included the worker bees of federal administration. Some were assistant secretaries (presidential nominees in the subcabinet who were subject to Senate confirmation), administrators, assistant administrators, and sometimes bureau heads. These bureaucrats were where the action really was. So, it appears reasonable to conclude that had the super-secretary structure lasted longer, Weinberger would probably have contributed to greater presidential control over--or at least coordination between--executive branch agencies." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA198
(2) Nixon's second political goal was to strengthen the executive's power vis-a-vis Congress. Lee however finds that the super-secretaries accomplished little in this respect: "During their confirmation process, Weinberger and Lynn both testified that they would not use their White House status to avoid dealing with Congress. Subsequent to becoming counsellors, there were several examples of all three counsellors testifying at congressional hearings in their capacity as counsellors rather than in their secretarial roles. They were truly super-secretaries, accepting the routine obligation of federal managers to appear before Congress to justify their proposals, policies, and budgets. They never invoked executive privilege." (Ibid.)
(3) Turning from political to managerial goals: A traditional justification of "grand reorganization" plans from the Brownlow Committee onward was that they would rationalize the management of the executive branch by putting closely related activities under the same department. Lee concludes that Nixon's super-secretaries did in fact improve the rational management of the government: "By giving the counsellors duties based on functions, Nixon had created a structure that brought together all like activities under one roof--albeit an administrative roof rather than one approved by Congress...[E]specially regarding counsellor subcommittees, task forces, and ad hoc working groups, the super-secretaries were convening at the working level people and programs coming from different agencies with overlapping policy roles. Weinberger demonstrated especially well the rationality of function-based federal organization and management." (Lee, p. 199.) http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA199
(4) With respect to other management goals traditionally given for reorganization--reducing the number of people who reported (at least theoretically and legally) to the president, and ensuring the implementation of administrative policies as they filtered out from center to periphery--Lee concludes (p. 200) that the evidence is too skimpy, but at least "the potential for effective coordination of policy implementation was glimpsed from time to time." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA200
There were however problems that could have doomed the plan even without Watergate:
(1) Despite the assertions of Weinberger and Lynn that they were not interested in day-to-day management responsibilities, it is hard to see how the super-secretaries could have become policy coordinators without becoming de facto line managers of all the departments, bureaus, and agencies in their domain. (Weinberger in fact created a reporting structure that in essence reflected precisely such control; Lynn was more inclined to avoid micromanagement--but Lee wonders how long he could have succeeded--and Butz was easily the most passive of the three "super-secretaries.") And this, needless to say, would lead to resentment from those secretaries who were *not* super-secretaries. In fact, the very existence of the super-secretaries caused resentment by some secretaries who thought that they were in effect being demoted. This was especially true of Rogers Morton, the Secretary of the Interior. Virtually the entire Interior Department was under the jurisdiction of Butz as counsellor for natural resources. (By contrast, with the other departments, one bureau in the department might be subject to one counsellor, and another bureau to another.) This was a humiliation for the head of a department that had described *itself* as "America's 'Department of Natural Resources.'" Lynn suggested meeting the problem of resentment by rotating the position of counsellorship on a regular basis among the secretaries dealing with the given functional policy area. But this of course could lead to problems of its own, such as "inconsistency, varying personalities, and different Cabinet members possibly having different levels of presidential trust." Lee, p. 201. http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA201
(2) Roy Ash argued that the super-secretaries experiment was doomed to failure because the super-secretaries were concurrently serving as secretaries of their departments. They would therefore always be seen--whether the perception was just or unjust--as protecting the interests of their departments. (Or, just as bad, the counsellors could have leaned over backwards to decide against their own departments to prove they were impartial.) Lee writes that there is little evidence that either of these things happened, but given the briefness of the experiment, this hardly proves the conflict problem could not eventually have become serious.
Lee concludes (p. 209) on the significance of the experiment: "It was not merely another cluster of advisors to the president, another expansion of the White House and EOP [Executive Office of the President] staff. Counsellors were not *staff*. They were *line.* They spoke for the president as part of the management chain of decision making and policy making...The super-secretaries had been given the power to make decisions in the president's name. It was precisely this characteristic that generated so much criticism, whether from rank-and-file Cabinet members or legislators protecting their pet policy areas. If only for that reason, it is no wonder the structure lasted less than half a year. The point was highlighted by the White House announcement in May 1973 explaining why Nixon had killed his counsellor project. The president now claimed he wanted more direct contact with his Cabinet secretaries, more open communication. No wonder there was such a collective sigh of relief and why no voices called for keeping the super-secretaries. Opposition to diminution of one's power is always fierce. Washington's status quo could not be overturned easily. Perhaps a powerful president just reelected and willing to fight could do so, but certainly not a weakened president struggling for survival. It is regrettable that this novel approach did not have a chance to play itself out, to demonstrate if such a relatively unorthodox template had something to offer future presidents who, whether they like it or not, are enveloped by the modern managerial presidency."
http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA209
In any event, since 1973 any attempt at a "grand reorganization" by unilateral executive action has been made almost unthinkable by the memory of Nixon's plan and its association (fairly or unfairly) with Watergate and presidential abuse of power. As for doing it by the powers delegated to the president under the Reorganization Act, that became even more difficult after 1973 than it had been previously. As Lee notes (p. 11) "From Hoover to Nixon, and especially from Truman to Nixon, Congress routinely passed Reorganization Acts that gave presidents reorganization powers subject to legislative veto. There were only brief lapses in such powers from 1945 to 1973. After Nixon, the renewals were less frequent, the lapses longer, the delegated reorganization authority more limited and constrained, and the duration of the acts shorter. The support within Congress for passing any more across-the-board Reorganization Acts had petered out." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA11 (Another factor here was the Supreme Court's 1983 *Chadha* decision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Naturalization_Service_v._Chadha which led to the legislative veto feature that had been integral to all previous congressional grants of reorganization authority to the president being deleted from the 1984 Act. Now a presidential reorganization plan would need to be affirmatively approved by votes of both houses of Congress within ninety days. It was little different from proposing a new law. Reagan did not use the Act to propose any reorganization.) So it looks as if 1973--had Watergate not intervened--was the last chance for major executive-branch reorganization.
Anyway, Lee's book is interesting because a widespread view of the reorganization was expressed in the title of Richard P. Nathan's *The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency* (1975). Lee sees the reorganization not as an illegitimate power grab but as a potentially important experiment that was never really given a chance.
Thoughts?
Nixon's 1973 reorganization effort was an attempt to break with this pattern. Nixon had failed to get congressional approval for his reorganization proposals in his first term. Fresh from his landslide victory over McGovern, Nixon was determined to gain control of the bureaucracy: he saw it as being in league with the (Democratic) Congress and with interest groups that benefitted from federal programs. So besides the usual good-government and managerial arguments for grand reorganization, Nixon had political and ideological motives.
What Nixon did is explained by Lee (p. 5):
"On January 5, 1973, the president dramatically announced at a meeting for congressional leaders that he was going ahead with some of his reorganization proposals from his first term, but this time he was implementing them unilaterally by exercising his inherent presidential powers. He was reorganizing *administratively.* No advance congressional consent would be required, no laws would need to be changed, and no reorganization plan would be subject to a legislative veto under the Reorganization Act powers Congress had routinely dedicated to presidents since the Herbert Hoover administration. Nixon thus rendered Congress's powers moot. This was a de facto reorganization that the legislative branch could not stop. In one bold move Nixon was doing what almost every president since Warren Harding had been proposing to Congress and that Congress had been rejecting.
"The new reorganization plan, largely designed by Ehrlichman, created three domestic super-departments. Nixon designated the secretaries of three Cabinet departments to serve simultaneously as 'counsellors to the President,' with offices in the White House complex and sweeping powers to oversee the bureaucracy. The secretaries headed the three existing Cabinet departments that would form the core of the three domestic super-departments Nixon had proposed to Congress in his first term. He named Caspar Weinberger, secretary-designate of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), as counsellor to the president for human resources; James Lynn, secretary-designate of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as counsellor to the president for community development; and Earl Butz, secretary of the Department of Agriculture, as counsellor to the president for natural resources. The media quickly began referring to them as super-secretaries." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA5 Nixon explicitly denied that his plan provided for a "super-Cabinet." At a February 8, 1973 Cabinet meeting he said "Another issue not to be defensive about is this: I notice the columnists say we have a 'super Cabinet' and a 'regular Cabinet.' That's a lot of baloney...We have a committee of Cabinet members to coordinate matters that cut across departments, but this new system does not downgrade anybody. There is no 'super Cabinet.'" Lee remarks (p. 83): "But it was all for show. While the term 'super-Cabinet' had never been used in the planning documents for the counsellor structure or during the January 5 unveiling, that is exactly what it was. Nixon was saying one thing and meaning another."
http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA83
(On the spelling of "counsellor" Lee explains "The nomenclature 'counsellor,' spelled with the double el, deserves a brief explanation. In common American parlance, 'counsel' means a lawyer. However, since the 1940s the State Department has had a senior official at the assistant secretary level called and spelled 'counselor,' with the meaning of senior advisor. In 1969, Nixon created a new rank of senior presidential assistant called and spelled 'counsellor.' According to speechwriter Ray Price, this title signified 'ministers-without-portfolio in the Cabinet.' A *de novo* American dictionary published in 1966 explained the double-el usage as 'esp[ecially] Brit[ish].' It could be that Nixon, himself a lawyer, wanted a title that clearly differentiated legal from policy work. It could also be that he felt the British spelling was more distinguished and imlied a more elevated position." http://books.google.com/books?id=xizs6cM-gREC&pg=PA23 But newspapers almost invariably "corrected" Nixon's spelling to "counselor"...)
The super-secretaries experiment only lasted a few months. It was abandoned in May after Ehrlichman and Haldeman resigned, under fire for the Watergate cover-up. Haldeman's successor as White House chief of staff, Alexander Haig, "viewed the super-secretaries as an Ehrlichman project that no one else in the White House really cared about. The president, while having been authentically supportive of the counsellor structure, was now preoccupied with a different and much more important goal: political survival." (Lee, p. 6). http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA6
What I would like to ask here is, Suppose Watergate had not forced an end to the super-secretaries experiment? How would it have worked out? Obviously, it is difficult to say, given that the experiment lasted for less than five months. But Lee attempts an evaluation on whether the reorganization did show some promise of meeting the political and management goals Nixon set for it:
(1) Nixon's first political goal was to get more control over the executive branch. Lee argues that "It appears that, had the experiment lasted longer, the counsellors would have helped assert presidential control over federal departments and agencies. The strongest indication comes from Weinberger's counsellor activities. He created three active subcommittees that met regularly (at first every two weeks, then monthly) and consisted of the working-level bureaucrats for that policy area. Rather than the sometimes figurehead secretaries, his subcommittee membership included the worker bees of federal administration. Some were assistant secretaries (presidential nominees in the subcabinet who were subject to Senate confirmation), administrators, assistant administrators, and sometimes bureau heads. These bureaucrats were where the action really was. So, it appears reasonable to conclude that had the super-secretary structure lasted longer, Weinberger would probably have contributed to greater presidential control over--or at least coordination between--executive branch agencies." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA198
(2) Nixon's second political goal was to strengthen the executive's power vis-a-vis Congress. Lee however finds that the super-secretaries accomplished little in this respect: "During their confirmation process, Weinberger and Lynn both testified that they would not use their White House status to avoid dealing with Congress. Subsequent to becoming counsellors, there were several examples of all three counsellors testifying at congressional hearings in their capacity as counsellors rather than in their secretarial roles. They were truly super-secretaries, accepting the routine obligation of federal managers to appear before Congress to justify their proposals, policies, and budgets. They never invoked executive privilege." (Ibid.)
(3) Turning from political to managerial goals: A traditional justification of "grand reorganization" plans from the Brownlow Committee onward was that they would rationalize the management of the executive branch by putting closely related activities under the same department. Lee concludes that Nixon's super-secretaries did in fact improve the rational management of the government: "By giving the counsellors duties based on functions, Nixon had created a structure that brought together all like activities under one roof--albeit an administrative roof rather than one approved by Congress...[E]specially regarding counsellor subcommittees, task forces, and ad hoc working groups, the super-secretaries were convening at the working level people and programs coming from different agencies with overlapping policy roles. Weinberger demonstrated especially well the rationality of function-based federal organization and management." (Lee, p. 199.) http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA199
(4) With respect to other management goals traditionally given for reorganization--reducing the number of people who reported (at least theoretically and legally) to the president, and ensuring the implementation of administrative policies as they filtered out from center to periphery--Lee concludes (p. 200) that the evidence is too skimpy, but at least "the potential for effective coordination of policy implementation was glimpsed from time to time." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA200
There were however problems that could have doomed the plan even without Watergate:
(1) Despite the assertions of Weinberger and Lynn that they were not interested in day-to-day management responsibilities, it is hard to see how the super-secretaries could have become policy coordinators without becoming de facto line managers of all the departments, bureaus, and agencies in their domain. (Weinberger in fact created a reporting structure that in essence reflected precisely such control; Lynn was more inclined to avoid micromanagement--but Lee wonders how long he could have succeeded--and Butz was easily the most passive of the three "super-secretaries.") And this, needless to say, would lead to resentment from those secretaries who were *not* super-secretaries. In fact, the very existence of the super-secretaries caused resentment by some secretaries who thought that they were in effect being demoted. This was especially true of Rogers Morton, the Secretary of the Interior. Virtually the entire Interior Department was under the jurisdiction of Butz as counsellor for natural resources. (By contrast, with the other departments, one bureau in the department might be subject to one counsellor, and another bureau to another.) This was a humiliation for the head of a department that had described *itself* as "America's 'Department of Natural Resources.'" Lynn suggested meeting the problem of resentment by rotating the position of counsellorship on a regular basis among the secretaries dealing with the given functional policy area. But this of course could lead to problems of its own, such as "inconsistency, varying personalities, and different Cabinet members possibly having different levels of presidential trust." Lee, p. 201. http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA201
(2) Roy Ash argued that the super-secretaries experiment was doomed to failure because the super-secretaries were concurrently serving as secretaries of their departments. They would therefore always be seen--whether the perception was just or unjust--as protecting the interests of their departments. (Or, just as bad, the counsellors could have leaned over backwards to decide against their own departments to prove they were impartial.) Lee writes that there is little evidence that either of these things happened, but given the briefness of the experiment, this hardly proves the conflict problem could not eventually have become serious.
Lee concludes (p. 209) on the significance of the experiment: "It was not merely another cluster of advisors to the president, another expansion of the White House and EOP [Executive Office of the President] staff. Counsellors were not *staff*. They were *line.* They spoke for the president as part of the management chain of decision making and policy making...The super-secretaries had been given the power to make decisions in the president's name. It was precisely this characteristic that generated so much criticism, whether from rank-and-file Cabinet members or legislators protecting their pet policy areas. If only for that reason, it is no wonder the structure lasted less than half a year. The point was highlighted by the White House announcement in May 1973 explaining why Nixon had killed his counsellor project. The president now claimed he wanted more direct contact with his Cabinet secretaries, more open communication. No wonder there was such a collective sigh of relief and why no voices called for keeping the super-secretaries. Opposition to diminution of one's power is always fierce. Washington's status quo could not be overturned easily. Perhaps a powerful president just reelected and willing to fight could do so, but certainly not a weakened president struggling for survival. It is regrettable that this novel approach did not have a chance to play itself out, to demonstrate if such a relatively unorthodox template had something to offer future presidents who, whether they like it or not, are enveloped by the modern managerial presidency."
http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA209
In any event, since 1973 any attempt at a "grand reorganization" by unilateral executive action has been made almost unthinkable by the memory of Nixon's plan and its association (fairly or unfairly) with Watergate and presidential abuse of power. As for doing it by the powers delegated to the president under the Reorganization Act, that became even more difficult after 1973 than it had been previously. As Lee notes (p. 11) "From Hoover to Nixon, and especially from Truman to Nixon, Congress routinely passed Reorganization Acts that gave presidents reorganization powers subject to legislative veto. There were only brief lapses in such powers from 1945 to 1973. After Nixon, the renewals were less frequent, the lapses longer, the delegated reorganization authority more limited and constrained, and the duration of the acts shorter. The support within Congress for passing any more across-the-board Reorganization Acts had petered out." http://books.google.com/books?id=ivVpf3_i7gAC&pg=PA11 (Another factor here was the Supreme Court's 1983 *Chadha* decision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Naturalization_Service_v._Chadha which led to the legislative veto feature that had been integral to all previous congressional grants of reorganization authority to the president being deleted from the 1984 Act. Now a presidential reorganization plan would need to be affirmatively approved by votes of both houses of Congress within ninety days. It was little different from proposing a new law. Reagan did not use the Act to propose any reorganization.) So it looks as if 1973--had Watergate not intervened--was the last chance for major executive-branch reorganization.
Anyway, Lee's book is interesting because a widespread view of the reorganization was expressed in the title of Richard P. Nathan's *The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency* (1975). Lee sees the reorganization not as an illegitimate power grab but as a potentially important experiment that was never really given a chance.
Thoughts?