Governing America: An Insider's Report from the White House and the Cabinet

by Joseph A. Califano Jr.

Joseph A. Califano, Jr. spent thirty years in Washington at the top of the Pentagon, on the White House staff as chief domestic advisor to the President, and in the Cabinet. His work, Governing America , explores the inner workings of the executive branch.

From Simon & Schuster, Governing America is Joseph A. Califano, Jr.'s insider report from the White House an the cabinet.

Hardcover

Published May 29, 1981

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another classic case of form follows function, where the former head of a big, sprawling bureaucratic empire (the once ubiquitous Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW)) writes a big, sprawling book about imperial bureaucracy. During the 30 months he spent as HEW Secretary, Califano's bailiwick was so vast that simply describing it all makes a strong but unintentional case that it was too much for one man. He spends whole chapters on his work on abortion, national health care, smoking cessation, civil rights, education, social security, welfare reform and other such monumental issues, as well as all their minor permutations. Califano had to investigate whether boiling laundry at lower temperatures reduced costs at Medicare-funded hospitals, whether or not girls' half-court basketball in Oklahoma violated Title IX, whether sodium nitrates in cold cuts caused cancer and had to be banned, whether a ramp in an Iowa library was required by Rehabilitation for the handicapped amendments, and so forth. He reminds the reader more than once that HEW's budget was more than that of any other government on Earth except the United States and Soviet Union. It is no surprise that the knowledge to manage and hopefully reform it was sometimes beyond his kenning.

Of course, near the end of his time at HEW, the E was broken off and turned into the Department of Education, a move that enraged Califano, and not just for bureaucratic turf reasons. The move came from a promise Carter made during the campaign (one of many that came back to bedevil him) to the National Education Association. As far back as the Johnson administration, Califano had been arguing against such a move since it was a transparent attempt to create another interest-group dependent department, which would respond directly to teacher's unions without outside carping. Though these days the Department is only opposed by Republican primary candidates, at the time the move to create a separate department was opposed by the New York Times, Washington Post, and most opinion-makers, including Albert Shanker and his AFT teacher's union, who feared its domination from the other group. In any case Carter's supposed attempt to reorganize all federal education programs into one department failed because groups outside HEW and the teacher's unions fought to keep their education programs in their own interest-group dependent departments, i.e. veterans in the Veterans Administration, dorm and other builders in HUD, the scientists in the NSF, other unions and job trainers in the Labor Department, etc.

The massive power of such special interest groups over policy and process is one of the continuing and tragic themes of this book. When Califano works to institutionalize Carter's vague campaign promises to "clean up the welfare mess," he tries to combine all the means-tested payments together, but finds that veterans won't give up special veterans benefits and be lumped in with "welfare mothers," builders and HUD won't give up rent supplements, agricultural interests don't want to divorce food stamps from the congressional agricultural committees and their dominance, etc. etc. Likewise, Califano's attempts to reform bilingual education, which he had helped fund back in 1968 under Johnson, and to help more children to learn English instead of teach purely Spanish or other languages, ran into intense and disproportionate attack from Hispanic politicians and advocates. Vice President Walter Mondale's staff claimed that despite obvious problems with a pure Spanish language education, this was "one of the few things these groups have" to campaign about, and urged him to keep such English objectives "fuzzy."

It is in situations like this that the ghost of Lyndon Johnson most haunts these pages. Whenever some tight political dilemma emerges, or whenever there is some conflict between goals and means, Califano is reminded of some supremely knowing quip or anecdote from his former boss and undisputed political master. Carter's ingenue naivete cannot help but suffer by comparison. Califano remembers that Johnson kept his White House staff on a short leash, claiming that everything they said should be considered as coming from him. He told Califano once that the only reason some reporter "talks to you is to find out about me, what I think, what I want. He doesn't give a damn about you." Johnson would sometimes read instant transcripts of Califano's briefings while they happened and send corrections to him before they were even over. Carter, by contrast, was tormented by constant leaks from White House aides attacking other administration officials and their plans, which sowed dissension in his Cabinet. Again by contrast, Califano remembers that Johnson was a maniac for the press, with his three TV sets, one for each network, in the Oval Office, private office, bedroom, and in several staff offices. Likewise, he read everything coming off the newspaper wire services, one of his staff claiming he didn't even have to check them because "Hell, I've got the greatest ticker reader in the world working for me. [Johnson] calls immediately if there's anything I need to know." By contrast, Carter merely proposed more laws against leakers, constantly called the press irresponsible and guilty of "appalling ignorance," and ultimately tried to ignore it, to his obvious peril.

In the end, Carter's firing of Califano and other top Cabinet members to appease his own rampaging staff members, such as Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell, demonstrated his political ignorance, and help to explain much of Califano's own frustration during his time at HEW. Despite Califano's high hopes and obvious skills, the wavering and inept politics of Carter doomed the behemoth Califano led to at best minor reforms. This book is therefore the cri de couer about his efforts and those failures. Yet after reading about the obvious problems in piloting such an unwieldy bureaucracy, there is little surprise that much of the American public was sick of such federal meddling and interest group control and were looking for a politician who promised to blow up the whole mess once and for all.