Public Executives: Imperium, Sacerdotium, Collegium? Bicentennial Leadership Challenges

Abstract

Challenges surrounding public executive leadership as America enters the third century of the Constitution are examined here. The focus is chiefly the presidency but with some comparisons and contrasts with professional local government managers. Since the beginnings of formal study of public administration, these two quite different executive levels have been principal concerns. Space limits prevent dealing with other executives here, and these two levels best highlight bicentennial era developments. Three crucial dimensions of the present environment of presidential and other public executive performance are discussed initially. First, big national expenditures fund many public activities which are performed by private interests and state and local governments; except for such direct entitlements as Social Security, relatively less is spent on functions performed directly by the national government. Second, American political parties-never disciplined in an European parliamentary sense-declined for nearly three decades before the 1980s as vehicles of sustained, national coalition building; special interest groups and political action committees have grown enormously in numbers, expenditures, and influence. Third, mass media largely dominate communication of political and governmental affairs; political image makers encourage a media focus on personality and contrived situations more than on substantive achievement. Factors two and three combine to produce a common result: BIG money is required to finance today's politics. That has major consequences for public administration. Big money in politics is significantly related to the first of two functions of chief executives which are discussed in part two of this assessment: executive staffing and increased reliance by presidents and other partisanly elected chief executives on transient political appointees for positions formerly filled by long-term professional experts. Besides executive staffing, a cluster of substantive functions of the chief executive is discussed in part two: policy leadership, implementation, and institutional/organizational maintenance and development. One thesis here is that achievement by the president and other elected political executives in these substantive responsibilities has been substantially diminished by a combination of high-level spoils and imperial/sacerdotal imagery.