19
means for redressing this governance gap. Its report the next year provided the blueprint
for FDR’s formal creation of the Executive Office of the Presidency (EOP), albeit after a
two-year struggle to get implementing legislation through Congress.
36
In his September
10, 1939, press release announcing the EOP’s establishment, Roosevelt explained that the
“task of general supervision and over-all management … rest upon the President as the
Constitutional Chief Executive.” Citing the growing size and complexity of government
and the concomitant increase in presidential responsibilities, he argued that this
“particular responsibility of the President requires better organization…. Only after this
has been accomplished will the President have adequate machinery for the business-like
handling of his job.”
37
As announced by FDR, the EOP consisted of five staff agencies of varying size,
including the White House Office (WHO), the BoB, a National Resources Planning
Board, a Liaison Office of Personnel Management, and an Office of Government
Reports.
38
In creating the EOP, FDR sought to provide, in Hugh Heclo’s words, “a fairly
coherent central capability to bring greater unity of purpose and consistency of action to
the executive branch.”
39
To do so, the EOP was organized on three broad conceptual
premises. First, its component staff agencies would be responsible for those managerial
36
The Brownlow Committee Report; for discussion of the adoption of the Committee’s recommendations,
see Dickinson, Bitter Harvest, Ch. 3.
37
Press Release, September 10, 1939. Executive Order 8248 formally established the EOP two days earlier,
under the aegis of Reorganization Plans I and II (July 1, 1939).
38
The WHO included six administrative assistants added to assist FDR’s three political secretaries on his
White House staff. The NRPB was to assist in long-term policy planning. LOPM consisted of one aide as
liaison to the Civil Service Commission (Roosevelt had hoped to move the CSC into the EOP, but was
rebuffed by Congress.) OGR pulled together several existing public information agencies responsible for
disseminating government information to the public. The fifth agency, “an office of emergency
management as the president shall determine,” was not created until May 25, 1940, when FDR formally
established the OEM as an umbrella organization housing any temporary defense-related agencies created
during the war emergency.
39
Hugh Heclo “The Executive Office of the President” Occasional Paper no. 83-4, Center for American
Political Studies, Harvard University, 11.
Convention