I was reading some history of Great Britain and I was struck by how often Chancellors of the Exchequer became Prime Minister. I don’t think we’ve ever had a Treasury Secretary become President. But when you think about it, Treasury Secretaries are really damn important! Robert Rubin got a lot of the credit for the 90s boom(they called Clinton’s economic plan Rubinomics), Obama relied heavily on Tim Geithner and now Jack Lew, and David Stockman was arguably the most important person in Reagan’s first term. When the economy faltered under GWB, the first person whose head was called for was Paul O’Neill’s.
I wonder if it’s less that Treasury Secretary isn’t a good springboard for the Presidency so much as it’s a position with a HUGE amount of accountability and thus scares off people with Presidential ambitions?
But not just Treasury, aside from Clinton we haven’t seen a SecState run a credible campaign in our lifetimes. Or any other Cabinet official unless they then won an elected office, such as Bill Richardson or Tommy Thompson(and their campaigns fizzled). In the early decades of the Republic, the Cabinet was the primary launching pad for the Presidency. And in most other democracies, heads of government still come from the cabinet. This is true even in other Presidential systems like France. Hollande took a more American path to the Presidency, but his predecessors, Sarkozy, Chirac, and Mitterand were cabinet officials.
So what gives? Is this a sign of a weakness in our system? Could it be the primary reason why the Presidency seems to be too big a job for the people we elect to handle?
Cabinet officials in the US aren’t elected officials. The people in those roles aren’t politicians in the traditional sense. Some have been elected officials like HRC but most haven’t.
Right. For a cabinet secretary to be elected, you have to have a perfect storm of a) a candidate with enough political skills to execute a successful campaign, which usually means someone who has held some elective office; b) a candidate who wants to put up with all the bullshit of being a candidate, which usually means someone who has held some elective office; and c) a candidate who possesses sufficient gravitas within their own party to become the nominee. This tends to rule out the party in power, as cabinet secretaries aren’t going to run against a sitting President, and typically wouldn’t run against an interested sitting Vice President. Our last two presidencies have cut against the vice-president-as-heir-apparent model, so it may be interesting to see if that trend continues if cabinet positions become more of a stepping stone to the presidency, at least for cabinet secretaries who have come into the position from a high elected office.
Most people couldn’t even name the cabinet positions, let alone who fills them. The average person probably only knows the secretaries of defense and state. Maybe the attorney general.
Important, yes, but how much do the skills and qualities required to be a good Treasury Secretary overlap with the skills and qualities required to be a good President, and/or presidential candidate?
Sure, but how many people could have named the governor of Arkansas in October of 1991 or the failed former executive of H-P a few months ago. Name recognition amongst the masses 1.5 years prior to the election isn’t a very useful predictor of campaign success.
The Cabinet has different constitutional significance in the US and the UK. The US Cabinet is responsible to the President and does precisely what the President tells it, and he can order it about at whim. The UK Cabinet operates, in theory, as primas inter pares, accountable to the Commons, and consists of fellow politicians from Parliament who have their own power bases and interests, although the Prime Minister is the predominantly most significant member.
The US Cabinet can generally be composed of nonentity administrators to fulfill the President’s will; the UK Cabinet is the result of political alliances clashing with ambitions, and each member will have their own agendas to fulfill.
The difference between a US Cabinet Secretary and a Cabinet Minister under the Westminster parliamentary system (not just in the UK, but in other Commonwealth countries) is really quite stunning. As already said, a Cabinet Secretary is anyone the president wants to appoint, responsible only to him, while Cabinet Ministers are elected MPs in their own right and, along with the Prime Minister, sit and vote in Parliament. A successful and popular Cabinet Minister may be well positioned to become the next party leader and hence future Prime Minister. Whereas a Cabinet Secretary is usually not even a politician.
Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. Both have the weakness that the transient nature of each department’s nominal head – which usually changes with each election cycle or even more frequently – means that the department is really run by the senior career civil servants, a state of affairs beautifully explored in the British comedy series “Yes, Minister!”.
During the early decades of independence, Secretary of State was the most prestigious position in the executive branch after the presidency - often more so than the lowly vice-presidency. Six Secretaries of State became president between 1801 and 1857.
However, several high profile Secretaries of State - particularly the great triumvirate of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun, never made the leap to the presidency. The last to be elected, James Buchanan, was not a very effective president. James Blaine came close in 1884, but his gaffes cost him an election.
Many higher ranking U.S. cabinet officials come in two categories.
Technocratic “wonks” who are not necessarily avid campaigners.
Senior politicians who receive a consolation prize after losing a major election or in primaries.
If anything, going from the cabinet to President would be more likely in the other direction. Besides Alexander Hamilton, the only other Secretary of the Treasury I can name off the top of my head is Lloyd Bentsen (Clinton’s first one), whose other claim to fame was as the Democrats’ Vice-Presidential candidate in 1988.
The only elected official responsible for the actions of the cabinet is the President. I’m not seeing how he avoids accountability; everything funnels back up to POTUS.
No. I’m just proposing that the President is accountable anyway because he has to be, otherwise the system breaks down. And that we shouldn’t reward elected officials for the very natural inclination to attempt to shield themselves from accountability by delegating their powers to unelected officials.
To a point. The last two administrations saw serious failures in the executive branch and both saw major drops in approval because of it, as well as their party being punished in midterms. It also made life difficult for those who wanted to succeed them.
But the buck apparently doesn’t really stop with them enough. Otherwise they wouldn’t continue to think that ignorance was an asset in those situations. “I didn’t know! I read about it in the paper just like you!”
That’s a debate in the UK, too, as there’s the fear that a minister will permit parts of his department to have operational freedom for whatever purpose and attempt to wash his hands of responsibility in the process.
It boils down in the UK though to ministers being accountable for everything in their department (and oftentimes accountable for everything in the subject too, so the Health Minister gets lumbered with criticism and questions not just about the NHS in England but also in Scotland despite it being devolved, or with private medicine questions).
Speaking of being responsible for a subject, I’ve always marveled at how Presidents are supposed to be responsible for the economy, but aren’t always held accountable by the public for a failure in their administration. Responsible for what they can’t control, held blameless for things they can.
The US cabinet has become pretty neutred over the last few decades. Secretaries used to operate with a fair amount of independence, but that’s been whitiled away in the post-war era, so that now their basic function is to serve as front-men for Whitehouse policy. As such, the posts are both less desirable than they used to be and less suited as a jumping off point for bigger things.
Since World War II, there has definitely been stronger White House senior staff control over the Cabinet, and that has been a bipartisan trend (Nixon was perhaps the most notorious for emasculating Cabinet secretaries, including his own Secretary of State, as Kissinger was, with his encouragement, pretty much running foreign policy out of the West Wing). Cabinet secretaries are expected to run their departments and not embarrass the President. Good news out of any department is probably going to be announced by the President, maybe with the secretary standing next to him, but probably not. Bad news is the secretary’s own.
As syncrolecyne noted, service as Secretary of State used to be a real plus for presidential candidates. These days, not so much, but Hillary might be the exception to the rule.
William Safire once wrote that every Cabinet should contain a potential President, which is a nice thought but more the exception than the rule these days.