Lori Sturdevant: Too many presidential appointments

By Lori Sturdevant

Last update: August 26, 2009 - 4:45 PM

The Aug. 23 New York Times report that the Senate has confirmed just 43 percent of some 500 top appointive positions in the Obama administration had me reaching for a 2008 book by a former Minnesotan, "A Government Ill Executed," by Paul C. Light.

Light is a former associate dean of the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, and a national authority on the federal service. His most recent book describes how "starve the beast" thinking and partisan political meddling have combined to erode the effectiveness of federal agencies.

The swelling number of positions requiring Senate confirmation is a particular target of Light's criticism. He notes that when Franklin Roosevelt took office, 51 positions went to the Senate for a vote. Today, the White House puts that count at 543. Obama has made selections for 319 of those posts, and the Senate has confirmed 236.

Light noted: "Given their importance to government, one might imagine that the confirmation process would be tailored for efficiency and effectiveness. But (it is) actually a vast morass that can be best described as 'nasty and brutish without being short.' Not only is it flooded by increasing numbers of appointees, it is now governed by a highly centralized review process that provokes the very bureaucratic games it is designed to suppress."

That a Democratic administration, presumably more government-friendly than its Republican predecessor, is having such trouble filling key posts suggests that a systemic flaw needs correcting. Light recommends greatly streamlining the appointments process and reducing the number of presidential appointments by half. He also says that any presidential position that cannot be nominated and confirmed within six months of a vacancy should be abolished. With so many positions still vacant more than seven months after the inauguration, perhaps the Obama administration should consider some of them permanently unfilled.

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