Ike & the Lilliputians

To be elected President of the U.S. is one thing; to get real control of the U.S. Government is something else again. Bound up in a web of civil-service regulations and often forced to keep holdover Democrats as their right-hand men, Ike's Cabinet and sub-Cabinet members sometimes feel like Gulliver straining to break out of the bonds of the swarming Lilliputians.

Last week Eisenhower moved to unshackle his top appointees and give them more power to shape the policies for which they are responsible. At his direction, the White House staff set to work drafting an executive order which would take several hundred key government jobs out from under control of civil service, give the Eisenhower Administration a chance to fill them with men of its own choosing.

Until Harry Truman (also by executive order) placed them under civil service, the jobs to which Ike's order will apply were held by "Schedule A men." In Washington bureaucratese, a "Schedule A man" is one who, while not of Cabinet or sub-Cabinet rank, has an important policy-making function. Unlike career civil servants, Schedule A officials may be hired & tired at their bosses' discretion.

In deciding who goes on Schedule A, Ike and his aides must try to reconcile two sound principles that often conflict: 1) the morale and job security of the federal service should not be threatened by political appointees; 2) the Administration's policy decisions should be in the hands of the President, his Cabinet officers and other appointees, not in the hands of civil servants. The difficulty comes in trying to draw the line between the two sound principles.

In the U.S. bureaucracy, an agency chief, a Cabinet member or even the President does not get his way simply by giving orders. Washington has seen many policies handed down from on high that were never put into effect. High-and middle-level bureaucrats can stall, thwart, water down or otherwise sabotage top decisions without any overt act that can be proved insubordinate.

Inevitably, Democrats will accuse the new Administration of going after more jobs for patronage purposes, and, no doubt, patronage was a factor in the decision to put some civil-service jobs back on Schedule A. But the overriding motive is managerial, not political. To meet their responsibilities, Ike & Co. need more leverage to move the civil service out of its well-worn ruts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.