The President and His Political Executives

Abstract

NICHOLAS I, the Iron Czar of Russia, was reputed to have said shortly before his death, I do not rule Russia; ten thousand do. Nicholas, unfortunately, was silent on the extent to which he ruled the ten thousand clerks. For if the ten thousand were his clerks, then he ruled Russia. If they were not his clerks, he did not. More than time and space separates nineteenth-century Russian Czars and modern American Presidents. But time and theory are great solvents. Czars, presidents, pharaohs, kings, business executives, labor leaders, prime ministers, popes, military commanders-all have been forced by occupational necessity to consider the question of how (and to what extent) they should attempt to control a sizable bureaucracy. And the answer has invariably been conditioned by the number of clerks who could be induced, by discipline or free response to leadership, to consider themselves loyal to the Chief Executive. The federal government of the United States today employs more than 2,300,000 persons. These employees exist to recommend and to carry out a bewildering array of national pblicies.