The President's Cabinet

The more things change...

The 1990s seems to be the decade of the "outsider" running for public office. Americans, frustrated by the gridlock they see in Washington and petty politics on the campaign trail, have come to believe that only by "throwing the bums out" can government be made to work for the people.

Candidates have been quick to seize on this anger by, whenever possible, proclaiming that they too are distressed by entrenched incumbents and will remain independent of it even taking office. Aspirants for the presidency have been particular vocal in this regard. Blaming the nation problems the entrenched Washington establishment, they promise to put "new" people with fresh ideas into their administrations.

Most of the candidates for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination took this stance. (Senator Robert Dole, a member of Congress for more than 20 years was the only exception.) Four years earlier, Bill Clinton told his followers that if, an outsider, were elected, he would install a cabinet that "looked like America."

Yet the phenomenon of railing against incumbents and insiders is not new. Indeed, Jimmy Carter based his successful 1996 campaign on exactly the same claim:

The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get...changes merely shifting around the same group of insiders....The insiders have had their chance and they have not delivered....The time has come for the great majority of Americans to have a president who will turn the government of this country inside out.

Now look at a few of the people he named to his cabinet:

• Secretary of State Cyrus Vance: A successful and wealthy corporation lawyer and board member of the Rockefeller Foundation, IBM, Pan Am, and The New York Times, Vance served both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson as an official in the Defense Department.

• Secretary of Defense Harold Brown: Before becoming president of the California Institute of Technology, Brown was secretary of the air force in the Johnson Administration and worked for Presidents Nixon and Ford on strategic arms control negotiations.

• Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal: A self-made millionaire director of the Bendix Corporation, Blumenthal was a U.S. trade representative during the Kennedy-Johnson years.

Next consider President Reagan, another self-styled outsider, who also promised to bring new blood to the executive branch. But like Carter's "outsiders," most had previous government experience, most were lawyers or executives in charge of large companies, and all had traveled in the upper reaches of power and influence for years. Two examples:

• Secretary of Treasury Donald Regan: The former head Merrill, Lynch, one of the nation's largest stockbrokers, Regan was in addition vice-chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and a member of the Business Roundtable, a powerful corporate lobbying organization.

• Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger: Once an official of the Bechtel Group, Inc., a huge multinational construction company, Weinberger had previously served as director of the Office of Management and Budget and secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Nixon. In addition, he served on the boards of directors of Pepsico, Quaker Oats, and other companies.

Even though he was vice-president at the time of his election, George Bush promised during the campaign to bring "wholesale change" and "new faces" to Washington. Still, he too chose men and women who had been working for years in the inner circles of power:

• Secretary of Treasury Nicholas Brady: A graduate of Yale and Harvard, Brady was chairman and chief executive officer of Dillon, Read, & Co. at the time of his appointment. He served on the boards of directors of several large corporations including Purolator Courier, NCR, and H. J. Heinz and owns stocks and other assets worth millions of dollars.

• Secretary of State James A. Baker III: Heir to a Texas family fortune, Baker attended Princeton University and the University of Texas and joined one of Houston's largest law firms. He was a deputy secretary of Commerce during the Ford administration and then served first as President Reagan's chief of staff and later as Secretary of the Treasury. Like Brady, Baker's holds several million dollars in assets.

• National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft: Scowcroft, who graduated from West Point, became President Richard Nixon's military aide in 1969 and then deputy to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Since the mid-1970s Scowcroft has chaired several important presidential commissions on national security matters and had been called "one of Washington's permanent fixtures," an "old hand," one of the "wise men," and an "estalishmentarian."

Finally, upon taking office President Clinton followed his predecessors by naming men and women who had been traveling at the highest of political and corporate power for years.

• Secretary of the Treasury: First, Llyod Bentsen, three-term senator from Texas, former Democratic vice-presidential candidate, member of an elite Dallas law firm, and linked to petroleum interests. Robert Rubin, former president of the New York stock exchange, replaced Bentsen in 1994.

• Secretary of State Warren Christopher: A deputy U.S. attorney general in the 1960s and under secretary of state in the Carter administration, Christopher was a member of a prestigious Los Angeles law firm at the time of his appointment and had served as a confidant to top Washington politicians for years.

The list is, of course, selective. Nor does it prove that Democrats and Republicans hold the same positions on important issues. Conservative and moderate presidents differ on a host of policies. But power elite theorists use these backgrounds to demonstrate that presidential appointments usually involve people with years of government and corporate experience and with extensive formal and informal contacts with other establishment personalities. They are individuals who, if not born into the upper crust of society, were very much a part of it at the time of their appointments. Most important of all, they share a "world-view," as set of assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, and values that bound them closely to the large corporate and financial community. In a nutshell, the people who rule corporate America also dominate government.

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