Curbing Cabinet Government

Carter and his aides set tougher rules

When Jimmy Carter first became President, he talked a lot about decentralizing the "imperial presidency" and relying on "Cabinet Government." He gave his new Cabinet members considerable latitude in picking their own aides and working out their own policies. But the experiment also produced damaging public disputes.

Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano Jr. let it be known that he did not like Carter's niggardly approach to spending for new social programs. Word leaked that Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal thought the President was wrong to push for full-scale tax reform in 1978. Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps blasted Carter's handling of the Bert Lance affair. Said one insider: "The Cabinet does what it wants because it's not afraid of this President. When the Cabinet members screw things up, nothing happens to them."

To end all that, the President warned at a Camp David meeting with his Cabinet last month that he expected his appointees to begin acting more like members of the Carter team. No longer were they to attempt bureaucratic end runs around senior White House aides. When telephoned by such senior aides as Hamilton Jordan, Press Secretary Jody Powell or Congressional Liaison Chief Frank Moore, Cabinet members were to respond as if the President himself were calling. Full debate was fine before a policy was set, Carter said, but once a decision was made, public dissent or anonymous leaking would be viewed as disloyalty.

Further evidence of Carter's shift to "White House Government" came to light last week as some appointees who are not yet fully White Housebroken disclosed to TIME the contents of two memos sent after the Camp David meeting to all twelve members of the Cabinet. One, signed by Jordan and Cabinet Secretary Jack Watson, asked Cabinet members to hand-deliver to Carter their personal evaluations of the jobs done by their top aides in such posts as Assistant Secretary and Assistant Administrator.

The independence and lack of political savvy of such aides has become a sore point to senior White House staffers. "One of the biggest mistakes we made during the transition was letting the Cabinet secretaries play such an independent role in naming their assistants," complained one White House aide. Said another: "We've got to find a way to bring the second-and third-level people on board this train." Several of the Cabinet officers grumbled privately at the request to evaluate their assistants. Said one Cabinet staffer: "This could be an opportunity for the secretaries to give poor grades to the very people the White House pushed in here."

In a second memo, Carter himself requested that his Cabinet officers make themselves available "at least twice each month" to participate in election-year campaigning for Carter-favored Democrats. Although Carter emphasized that such activities were to be in addition to the normal work week, a follow-up memo from Jordan informed Cabinet members:

'You may use earned vacation time for such activity, or go on leave without pay during such periods."

Despite the new display of White House muscle, the Administration insisted last week that the changes amounted only to improved management techniques, not abandonment of Cabinet Government. "We remain convinced that the more decentralized system is the best one for good policymaking, and we intend to continue with it," said Jody Powell. "But when it comes to getting a policy through Congress, or explaining it to the public, or implementing it," added Powell, with bureaucratic understatement, "we need to marshal all our forces."

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