Homeland Security Watch

Comment by William R. Cumming

March 23, 2008 @ 9:03 pm

Whatever the merits of these appointees, and in my opinion they have the paper credentials to fill the positions, it is extremely important in the last year of an administration that key positions do get filled. Both parties have mistakenly fallen into the trap that unfilled key positions means that more rather than less will be accomplished in the long term, and in particular long-term vacancies are in the interest of the party that may come into power in the Executive Branch. My personal experience is the opposite. Sometimes the late-in-the-day appointments bring into power persons with far greater stamina, drive, skills, and even ambition than those in the early going. The Federal Vacancy Reform Act, monitored and enforced by GAO, needs to be made even stricter to ensure that Senate Advise and Consent power is not totally eroded by ACTORS. Typically the Plum Book (or Prune Book as called by some is published by May of an election year by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee (now Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs). A new designation should be added to that document for each position deemed a National Security Position under 5 CFR so that vetting can start now for potential appointees, not waiting for the election to be held. This could be a vast improvement on the chaos of transition just by having each Presidential candidate list his or her top 10 candidates for National Security Positions requiring Senate advise and consent (PAS jobs.) President Clinton, who obviously did not think he would win in 1992 until the very end of the campaign had no real stable of candidates beyond the most senior jobs and and incompetent White House personnel office made the job of filling PAS jobs even worse by its delays and ignorance of rules and thereby wasted most of Clinton’s first year in office. This is documented by the simple measure of dates of appointment of his top 300 appointees. Adoption of artificialities such as NO appointees from another party or no former civil servants reduces the already pathetically small number of qualified candidates for National Security jobs even less. By the way it is interesting that there is still no adquate updating of Title 5 CFR for Homeland Security positions interpreting those jobs as National Security positions. Obvious that smooth bureaucratic process is not a goal of either party and thus allows continuous disruption by the proverbial (and I don’t mean physically handicapped) lame, halt, blind that have money but not much else to offer. The end of politically appointed Ambassadors should be announced by all candidates since amatuer night must end if foreign relations are to be conducted successfully. There might be exceptions but they should remain minimal in number. Language skills must remain a basic ingredient in identifying competence.

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