So, I’m finally working through the West Wing (I know, I know, where have I been?) and it’s fascinating stuff, particularly to a British constitutional buff as myself. One thing I have noticed is that the staff of the Executive Office who are the main cast seem to have an awful lot of power to decide policy, make deals with Congresspeople, negotiate with bodies and influence the President. I know that it’s purely for the drama of television, but exactly what place is there in this arrangement for the Cabinet, who (I presumed) are actually meant to handle these things for the President?
Still in Season 1, and at the start of one episode the Vice President notes that he’s chairing the first Cabinet meeting in six months! Not only does the gap between meetings raise an eyebrow, but also that the Cabinet is (apparently) so irrelevant it can be chaired by a sinecure like the Vice-President.
So what’s the straight dope here? Is this television oversimplification, or has the Cabinet gradually become more irrelevant, or am I completely misunderstanding the power-map in the US Executive?
The oversimplified answer is that the President defines the duties of the Cabinet. The President may decide to appoint powerful policy makers and give them a large amount of freedom to run their own departments, or he may choose figureheads or career bureaucrats who play a mostly administrative role.
For example, Barak Obama gave Hillary Clinton a fair amount of authority in her role as Secretary of State. By contrast, Colin Powell was often kept out of the loop in the runup to the invasion of Iraq and was sometimes considered as merely a “salesman” whose job was to gain support for a policy, not help shape it.
The cabinet in the US are not policymakers; they execute the policy as directed by the president and administer their departments (usually in their departmental headquarters).
The West Wing of the White House is where the policymakers work with the president; the cabinet members are summoned when a policy affects them.
Well, if Aaron Sorkin had based his show on Team of Rivalsit would have been different. But remember, in the original concept, even the President was supposed to be seen only rarely, with the real story being the young, relatively inexperienced staffers who have to deal with Important Issues and a crushing workload.
It’s all much more complicated than it seems on television.
The president’s staff has no power, except the power to communicate the president’s wishes. In the real world, that is considerable power, but it is all unofficial. In Britain, the PM is part of the ruling majority but in the U.S. the Executive branch is completely separate from the Legislative branch. Congress introduces all bills, modifies them, and votes on them. Theoretically they could do all this without any input from the President - who could then either sign or veto them, and Congress could override any veto. In reality, the President and his staff write all important bills and get a friendly member of Congress to introduce them. Congress will then amend and revise the bill as needed to get them passed, although the opposition can introduce bills of their own. The President and his staff use suasion to get this done. As can be seen in today’s Congress, there is little a president can legally offer to force a recalcitrant Congress to do his bidding. There are a variety of political promises that can be made - support for a different bill, public appearances, favors for constituents, the hiring of colleagues - but those political favors have been systematically pared away. It is one against many, so the staff is there mostly to even out the odds and to provide ways for the hundreds of members of Congress to deal with the executive.
The Cabinet is run by political appointees of the president. They are there to run to various pieces of government according to his wishes. They do all the day-to-day work other than putting through laws. However, Congress controls their budgets, even though the president puts numbers to them in a series of budget laws. Much of the negotiations between the president and Congress lies in the size of these numbers. Congress keeps tens of billions of military projects going even when the Pentagon no longer wants them because the money goes to defense contractors in their district. This gives powerful incentives on both sides. Congress can also pass laws that directly affect each department in the Cabinet and so has powers there as well. The President can’t deal directly with all 16 cabinet positions, and having all of them at every meeting makes little sense except for major policy decisions. The Chief of Staff is a cabinet-level position and so are the directors of the Office of Management and Budget and the Council of Economic Advisers, so they get delegated as go-betweens.
It all sounds too complicated, split, and indirect to work, and many times it doesn’t. Washington has found accommodations that keep everything running but no sensible person would create such a monster from scratch. (I haven’t even mentioned the Vice President, who may or may not play a role in any or all of this, as another representative of the president with no real powers himself.)
You can see why all this has to be simplified for television. The White House staff numbers around 2000; there are 535 voting members of Congress (and some non-voting ones); 16 cabinet departments with hundreds of sub-departments; many independent agencies, and the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal court system. No humans could do all the work that the West Wing staff does. But on Law and Order the same two lawyers try a different murder case every week, even though in real life many murder cases require years. You need to spend your entire life to understand the power lines in Washington. I’ve just told you more than 90% of Americans know.
The only actual power the cabinet has under the Constitution is to approve or deny a request from the Vice-President to invoke the 25th Amendment against the President’s wishes (essentially suspending POTUS until Congress ways in). And even then it only has that power until/unless Congress provides for another body to exercise it.
The American political system is obviously different than the British one. In a British cabinet, the individuals are all elected Members of Parliament in their own right. They might lose their position in the cabinet but they would still be a voting legislator so they have their own individual power base.
This is not the case with the American cabinet. Only the President and Vice President are elected to office. Everyone else is appointed to their position and serves at the pleasure of the President. He can fire anyone he wants other than his VP and their political clout vanishes with their job.
So in a sense, the British cabinet works with the Prime Minister while the American cabinet works for the President. Cabinet officials are essentially just the top level members of the President’s staff.
I don’t know that it’s that grossly simplified - more that it falls somewhere near/ just outside the “realm of possibility” for a given administration. As others have noted, the relative pull of the White House staff versus the Cabinet varies from administration to administration. And even within a particular administration, certain members of the Cabinet may be more directly influential on policy than others. But ultimately, the main responsibility of a Cabinet member is to run his or her Department, and how much of an active advisory role he or she gets depends on the President.
It’s important to note that we never really see Bartlet’s senior staff actually “execute” anything, outside of running the West Wing itself. Instead, 90% of what they do on the show is negotiate with policymakers or deal the press on behalf of the administration, which is what they do in reality as well. Although I suspect that a Real World Sam Seaborn wouldn’t be so involved in this process, given how low his position is on the totem pole. But the active role Josh and Leo take in pushing for Bartlet’s legislative agenda in Congress rings true (or at least believable) to me.
Also as we’ve leared by watching The West Wing, this Chief of Staff is the most powerful man in Washington, as he controlls access to the President, among other things. (I’m currently binging on it myself)
