Presidents
Presidents takes on
characteristics that are strange. A man
with all that presidential power hesitates to fire anyone and presidents
involve all kinds of links and motions on about how to get rid of employees
that they no longer want in their administration. It is said that the President Roosevelt never fired anybody but
that he would take the duties of that job and give it to some other employee
and in that way would isolate the person he wanted to remove from power. Whether he left the employ of the
government, he didn't care. He was
superior. He was interested in what
they did for his cause or if they supported his policies of the office. The
President was a master of presidential politics.
You might think President
Roosevelt was a human being. This
statement limits his ability to listen and to work so much, that is as much as
a human being can be When you look at
the office of president today, there are some 600 people reporting to him, plus
or minus. One wonders how he hears
them. The answer is –he doesn't.
If you look at the early White
House, we see that it was indeed a house painted white. The President lived there and he had his
office there. It was a building
provided for those purposes by the Congress.
On up until the time of President Roosevelt, Franklin D. that is, the
White House was a pretty country home, old Virginian style and much Virginian
in its action. The President was a man
of leisure who received guests in his house through their petitions and
sometimes he did something for them and many times he didn't. Early in the game, we see one thing that was
common to all presidents, they listened.
Up until the day, and including
the day of Roosevelt, President Roosevelt, Franklin, again that is, that was
the nature of the White House. It was a
country farmhouse. It's a wonder they
didn't drink water out of a dipper. However, rumors have it that they drank
bourbon whiskey out of glasses.
At the beginning of World War II,
one looks at a picture of President Roosevelt with his advisors around him, we
see that it was a rather small picture and he had a small number of
advisors. The direction of his advisors
started with Harry Hopkins. Harry Hopkins
was a slight man, a frail man who had a good mine for power. He was secretary to President Roosevelt and
advised him on all matters of appointments and the working of his office.
Soon Harry must have worn out,
because Harry soon began fading from presidential pictures. There was an admiral that showed up standing
behind President Roosevelt at important conferences outlining how World War II
was to end. That was Admiral William D.
Leahy who as the war started to come to its end always stood behind President
Roosevelt. Leahy was within whispering
distance to the President. He was there
not only as a Navy man, but he served as former Assistant Secretary of the Navy
for complete political advice, international and home. The President had to look somewhere for
advice. He had to look somewhere for a man he trusted who would extend his
ability to listen.
Soon, Leahy disappeared from the
picture and soon even Roosevelt disappeared from the picture, but the staff of
the President has never disappeared form the picture. It has grown stronger and stronger each year. As the nation has become more complicated
and bigger as the presidential power of appointment has become much more
powerful, there must be some way to delegate the President's powers. The
President does not want to delegate his presidential power. That is his currency with the nation, with
the Congress and with those with power outside the government. The President wants to extend his listening
time and make his decision time more equitable and more predictable and to make
it more according to his solution.
Presidential appointments are a big problem because presidential
appointments involve appointments of great power to man and the nature of
presidential appointments has changed in more than number. The President has real problems in the
organization of his office, both by himself and by the parameters of the
Constitution and of course by the Congress.
All three of those are big paddles in a small pond for it has a real
power to it, that pond does. The power
pot would never be too big because the President sees it as the source of his
ability to get things done, first in the executive office of the president and
vice president. The vice president has
no power until the president dies. He
has power that is based on expectation of the life and death of the president.
The Presidency is a dangerous
office. Speculation concerning the
power is not just a laugh. Since the
time of Abraham Lincoln, roughly one-half of presidents have been shot at and
some have hit their mark. Therefore, the odds of getting through the presidency
are pretty good. But to get through it
without being shot at, or hit, or wounded are not so good. Yet, men stand up and want to be President
of the United States. The longevity is
much better for the appointed positions, however the longevity of the appointments
otherwise, such as retaining your employment with the government, is rather
short when working for the President.
The first group of men who work for the President are the Cabinet. The heads of the presidential cabinet. The Congress accepts and/or rejects
presidential appointments to the cabinet offices. The Constitution says that the Congress shall consent and advise
and that's a pretty good equation for control.
The President starts out with his main officers and he shares control of
those officers with the Congress.
Therefore, he has a hard time