A bipartisan agenda for presidential appointments

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have a rare opportunity to reach across the partisan lines to fix the sluggish presidential appointments process that one or the other will inherit on Inauguration Day. As it stands now, much as both candidates promise to be ready on Day One, the winner will be lucky to have his Cabinet and sub-Cabinet in place by the middle of Year Two.

The reality is that the appointments process has been getting later and later with each passing administration. John F. Kennedy had his Cabinet and sub-Cabinet in place by early spring of 1961, Reagan by early fall of 1981, Clinton by early winter of 1992 and George W. Bush by mid-winter of 2002.

There are two reasons for the increasing delay. First, the number of presidential appointees has more than tripled to 3,000-plus over the past 40 years. Roughly 600 of the total are subject to Senate confirmation, which operates on a first-come, first-served basis and can only accommodate so many nominations at a time.

The rest of the 3,000 are “at will” appointees who serve at the president’s pleasure. These alter-ego chiefs of staff and assistant assistants are nearly invisible to the public, but wield enormous influence in the executive branch by acting as closely watched enforcers for the White House agenda. As such, they receive just as much scrutiny in the review process as their much more visible Senate-confirmed bosses.

Second, the process itself is nasty, brutish, and not at all short. Nominees must wait for months as the White House, FBI, IRS, Office of Government Ethics, and Senate inspect the 60 pages of forms that must be filled out on the way to confirmation, including one that still has to be completed by typewriter. The process produces tons of paper, but has almost no bearing on the quality of the nominee.

McCain and Obama should offer a simple bipartisan plan for fixing these problems, and then press for enactment before the party conventions.

They should certainly embrace a long-overdue cut in the number of presidential appointees. Eliminating half of the president’s appointees would not only save more than $100 million in salaries and benefits, it would provide an opportunity to streamline an executive suite that is jammed with layer upon layer of minimally qualified appointees. McCain joined with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) three times during the 1990s to sponsor a one-third cut, and should up the ante and ask Obama to be his co-sponsor this time around.

McCain and Obama should also draft legislation giving each candidate a small amount of federal funding for transition planning during the general election campaign. All it would take is a simple amendment setting aside a fraction of the millions the federal government gives the two parties for their nominating conventions.  Such pre-election transition would come too late to help McCain or Obama in this election cycle, but would provide the political cover for bringing their current transition-planning operations (yes, both have them) into the open.

Finally, McCain and Obama should propose new deadlines for the appointments process. Presidents should be given no more than 90 days to submit executive nominations to the Senate, and the Senate should be given no more than 90 days to hold an up-or-down vote.  If they really want to shock the system into action, McCain and Obama should also press Congress to abolish any position that cannot be filled in the 180-day period. This “doomsday” mechanism would give both branches ample incentive to protect appointees from the random political shootings that currently add months to the elongated process.

McCain and Obama obviously have a great deal of work ahead on the campaign trail, but should set aside time for these reforms.  Recent history shows that such reforms are most likely to pass when both parties think they will win the White House. Getting the reforms passed this summer would give McCain and Obama a chance to show they mean business about governing. And with more wannabe appointees lined up for landing than airplanes over O’Hare, they could all use some help saying “no” to the supplicants.

Light is the author of A Government Ill Executed and a professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.