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President-Cabinet Relations: A Pattern and a Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Richard F. Fenno Jr.
Richard F. Fenno Jr.
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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Extract

A common generalization about the distribution of power in the American political system states that it is fragmented and decentralized. In accordance with this view, the making of public policy decisions can be explained largely in terms of the continuous interaction, competitive or cooperative, among many diverse semi-autonomous centers of power, some governmental, others non-governmental. Each power-holding unit—individual or group, private or public—is a discrete, describable entity existing within a plural political universe. It must be perceived and understood not in isolation but as one unit in a larger system of interrelated parts. Within such a network, multiple role-playing, group cross-pressures, and institutional rivalry must be considered normal. This paper is an attempt to apply the generally pluralistic viewpoint so expressed to a much neglected political institution, the President's Cabinet, and to the power relationships involving an individual Cabinet member.

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Type
Research Article
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American Political Science Review , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1958, pp. 388 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1958

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References

1 For an early statement on the need for study, see Fairlie, John, “The President's Cabinet,” this Review, Vol. 7 (February, 1913), p. 29Google Scholar. A recent comment is that of Corwin, Edward S., The President: Office and Powers (New York, 1948), p. 516Google Scholar, note 88. The two books most commonly cited for reference by political scientists are essentially historical treatments, i.e., Hinsdale, Mary, A History of the President's Cabinet (Ann Arbor, 1911)Google Scholar; Learned, Henry B., The President's Cabinet (New Haven, 1912)Google Scholar.

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6 Truman, op cit., p. 437. For a similar viewpoint see also Brownlow, Louis, The President and the Presidency (Chicago, 1949), pp. 94–100Google Scholar; Appleby, Paul, “Organizing Around the Head of a Large Federal Department,” Public Administration Review, Summer, 1946, pp. 205–212Google Scholar.

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11 Ogg, Frederick A., “The American Cabinet,” Parliamentary Affairs, Winter, 1949, p. 36Google Scholar. For a good example of what we might label the Compensatory Cabinet theory, there is the following assertion regarding Warren Harding: “He could not be a Mellon, but he got Mellon; he could not be a Hughes, but he got Hughes; he could not be a Hoover, but he got Hoover; he could not be a Hays, but he got Hays.” Stoddard, Henry L., It Costs To Be President (New York, 1938), p. 476Google Scholar.

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33 Ibid., pp. 113–114 (italics supplied).

34 Ibid., pp. 118–119.

35 Hearings on Department of Commerce Appropriation Bill for 1944, U. S. House, op. cit., p. 8.

36 Ibid., p. 10 (italics supplied).

37 Hearings on Department of Commerce Appropriations Bill for 1944, U. S. Senate Subcommittee of Committee on Appropriations, 78th Congress, 1st Session, 1943, p. 63.

38 Hearings on Department of Commerce Appropriations Bill for 1945, U. S. House Subcommittee on Committee on Appropriations, 78th Congress, 2nd Session, 1944, p. 107. Jones argued again in 1944 for the restoration of the original amount, using the same rationale. See ibid., pp. 2, 6, 9, 13–14.

39 Hearings on Increasing the Borrowing Authority of the RFC, U. S. Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, 77th Congress, 1st Session, 1941, pp. 12–14, 20.

40 Hearings on Increasing the Borrowing Authority of the RFC, U. S. Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, 77th Congress, 2nd Session, 1942, p. 6.

41 Ibid., p. 8 (italics supplied); see also, ibid., pp. 10, 41.

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43 Jones and Angly, op. cit., p. 262.

44 Timmons, op. cit., p. 394; see also, ibid., p. 257.

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61 This statement is based on interviews with Cabinet Secretary Maxwell Rabb, his Assistant, Bradley Patterson, and with several of the departmental officials who are in closest contact with the Cabinet Secretariat.

62 For four examples of the Cabinet acting as a political sounding board see: (1) Baker, op. cit., VI, 487–488, 502–507; Houston, op. cit., I, 241–244; Seymour, Charles, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (Cambridge, 1926), II, 461Google Scholar. (2) Hull, op. cit., I, 203, II, 1057–1058; Stimson and Bundy, op. cit., p. 390; Perkins, op. cit., p. 377; Hearings on the Pearl Harbor Attack, U. S. Congress, Joint Committee for the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79th Congress, 2nd Session, 1946, II, 5432; Albertson, Dean, Roosevelt's Farmer, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University, 1955, pp. 380–381Google Scholar. (3) Farley, op. cit., pp. 103–107; Morgenthau, op. cit., October 4, 1947, p. 21; Ickes, Harold L., The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (New York, 1954), II, 240 ffGoogle Scholar. (4) Steele, op. cit., pp. 100–103.

63 A reading of memoir materials such as the Ickes diaries or of informed secondary accounts such as Donovan, Robert, Eisenhower: The Inside Story (New York, 1956)Google Scholar makes it amply clear that the Cabinet meeting performs this intangible function regardless of the predispositions of the President involved. For a good statement of it with respect to the Truman Cabinet, see Millis, op. cit., p. 280.

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67 Christian Science Monitor, January 17, 1957, p. 1Google Scholar; January 23, 1957, p. 1.

68 The relation of Mitchell's views to those of the President will be found in New York Times, March 4, 1954, p. 12Google Scholar; December 9, 1954, p. 20.

69 For example, Corwin, op. cit.; Baker, R. S. and Dodd, W. E. (eds.), The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1925), pp. 26, 112–113, 127–129, 222Google Scholar; Finletter, Thomas K., Can Representative Government Do the Job? (New York, 1945)Google Scholar, Chaps. 10, 11; Galloway, George, The Legislative Process (New York, 1953), pp. 445 ff.Google Scholar; Hyneman, Charles, Bureaucracy in a Democracy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, ch. 25; Kefauver, Estes, “The Need for Better Executive-Legislative Teamwork,” this Review, Vol. 38 (April, 1944), pp. 317–325Google Scholar.

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