Wasn’t Biden also Vice-President? Or do I misunderstand the argument you’re making?
What you want to do is to ask for results, and leave it to them to decide how to achieve them. In other words, what you want is a leader. Even in cases when the ultimate decision is yours, you consult with them before you decide, because they’re the one who will have to do it.
It’s like in the military: the general tells the colonel, “Take that ridgeline”; the colonel tells the captain, “Take that hill”; the captain tells the lieutenant, “Take that slope”; and the lieutenant tells his men, “Follow me”. Every one of those officers is a leader, and any one of them could be a general one day
If you’re the one making all the decisions, why do you even need them for?
And yet, micromanaging is a thing.
It’s a defective pathological counterproductive thing, but it happens. It wouldn’t surprise me if it happens a lot in the current administration.
One reason of many I’d never vote for a Trump cabinet member for President.
People like us might pay attention and notice whether or not a given Cabinet official is doing a good job. Most Americans? Yeah, riiiight.
ETA:
Again, you’re assuming that Americans even think about it that much.
At least in terms of electoral results, being a Cabinet secretary is far from comparable to being VP.
Let’s limit ourselves to the post-WWII era. (The past is a different country, if you go back far enough.) During this time, 14 different people have been President. Here’s the highest offices they held before becoming President for the first time:
VP, succeeded on Pres. death/resignation: 3 (Truman, LBJ, Ford)
VP, elected President: 3 (Nixon, Bush Sr., Biden)
Governor: 4 (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr.)
Senator: 2 (Kennedy, Obama)
Other: 2 (Ike, Trump)
Cabinet: 0
One thing about the VP: people are aware of the VP in a way that they aren’t of any Cabinet official. Other than Rockefeller and Ford during their short tenures as VPs, the VP has been the President’s running mate, running and winning as the visible #2 man or woman on a national ticket. Regardless of their job responsibilities, the VP starts off more well-known than all but the most exceptional Cabinet picks, not to mention being the proverbial heartbeat away from the Presidency, as implicitly noted above. Even when Tom Lehrer sang “Whatever became of Hubert?” people knew who he was talking about.
Totally off the topic, but putting together this table reminded me of a question: who was the last losing VP candidate to later become President?
A. FDR, who was the losing Dem VP candidate in 1920.
William Safire once said that every Cabinet should have at least one potential future President in it. I like that idea. They shouldn’t all be technocrats, nonentities, hacks or cronies.
That could be the best press conference ever: say that, and then say, “here’s my cabinet; that one is a potential future president. No, next to the nonentity.”
Almost every British Cabinet minister - and the juniors as well - secretly fancies their chances of getting the top job: some are not discreet enough about it*, but others just smile dismissively and hide behind the phrase “There isn’t a vacancy” - until they scent the blood in the water.
*A well-trailed speech and/or assiduous attention to requests from local party associations for a speech at their AGM or conspicuous help with a by-election campaign might be gossipped about as “showing a bit of ankle” or “going on manouevres”
I actually think this is more significant than we might consider.
Hoover had been wildly successful prior to becoming President. He was a self made millionaire, who had led heroic relief efforts to save Europeans from starvation during World War One. He was prominent in his role as Secretary of Commerce during the booming 1920s. That included help to Mississippi during a great flood in 1927.
So he came into office with a presumption that he was a great man. And yet the Great Depression began during his term; by the end, Hoovervilles were a euphemism for shanty towns.
So I imagine that this could have turned off a generation of Americans from thinking that cabinet positions are a good source for presidential candidates.
As a result, we got a series of Governors, Senators, and Vice Presidents, which then get viewed as the best pathways to the top job.
If Hoover had been successful as President, the trend of pulling highly qualified candidates from within the cabinet might have been more popular.
Although what you say about Hoover is 100% accurate, I doubt if very many people put it together that way and certainly hardly anyone knows about it today. My own guess is that cabinet ministers have no political base since they are not elected officials. And once the term ends, that’s it. The most important qualification for becoming president is electability, not ability.
Cabinet secretaries, in the U.S.