2
“[T]he gulf between the textbook approach to staffing the presidency and the approach
adopted by most postwar presidents is so great that one may be tempted to ask whether the
institutional presidency, originally advocated by Brownlow fifty years ago, has not just been a
figment of the imagination of political scientists and public administrators.”
1
Scholars have long debated the relative merits of “neutral” versus “responsive”
competence. On the one hand are those who argue presidents benefit by having a
relatively non-partisan, career-based staff of professionals who provide presidents with
historical memory, continuity, and - not least – administrative competence. On the other
are those who believe in the virtues of responsive competence – a staff composed largely
of political loyalists who are most sensitive to president’s needs as a political leader.
2
But as John Hart’s provocative observation suggests, the debate may be a largely
academic exercise; presidents since at least Nixon seem largely to have opted for
responsive, not neutral competence. Writing in 1995, Hart concludes, “If [neutral
competence] ever did exist, presidents have shown by their actions that they not been
enamored of it, and, more recently, have been inclined to bury it.”
3
Presidential actions notwithstanding, a significant number of presidency and
public administration scholars continue to extol the virtues of neutral competence.
4
Of
course the most famous study of the presidency, the 1937 Brownlow Committee Report,
1
John Hart, The Presidential Branch, 2
nd
ed. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1995), 216.
2
The paradigmatic arguments are by Hugh Heclo, “The OMB and the Presidency: The Problem of Neutral
Competence,” The Public Interest 38 (Fall 1975): 80-98; Terry Moe, “The Politicized Presidency,” in John
Chubb and Paul Peterson, eds., New Directions in American Politics (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1985).
For a review and synthesis, see Matthew J. Dickinson and Andrew Rudalevige, “Presidents,
Responsiveness, and Competence: Revisiting the ‘Golden Age’ at the Bureau of the Budget,” Political
Science Quarterly, forthcoming 2005.
3
Hart, Presidential Branch, 216.
4
Colin Campbell Managing the Presidency: Carter, Reagan and the Search for Executive Harmony
(Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986), Walter A. Williams Mismanaging America: The
Rise of the Anti-Analytic Presidency (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1991), Matthew J.
Dickinson, Bitter Harvest (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
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