Word: cabinets
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...There are still a few first-tier Cabinet jobs that come with independent clout: State, Defense, Justice, Treasury and perhaps Homeland Security. But while the size of the Cabinet has doubled since the Kennedy administration, federal policymaking has shifted to the White House, and an ever-expanding army of West Wing staffers now controls most of the levers of power. Most Cabinet secretaries merely take orders on questions of consequence, which is one reason why independent thinkers like Christine Todd Whitman haven't lasted long in the Bush Cabinet, and why the Clintonite Robert Reich wrote a book called "Locked...
...White House can't focus on everything, so the marching orders to Cabinet secretaries are usually to avoid making policy or making news. That's why Bush has preferred loyal, stay-the-course yes-men like HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson, a Texas crony who fiddled while the housing market burned, but knew enough to stay out of the spotlight until he got embroiled in an alleged political corruption scandal and recently announced his resignation. Meanwhile, the Cabinet itself, which used to serve as a presidential advisory board, no longer serves as much of anything. There hasn't been a truly...
...proliferation of Cabinet-level positions has been most pronounced in the realm of domestic policy, as various Presidents have tried to telegraph their seriousness about various issues by giving them their own departments. But the existence of the Department of Energy hasn't given America a coherent energy policy; it's just given the rest of the government an excuse to ignore energy policy, while giving energy industries a good target to focus their lobbying efforts. Same goes for the Department of Education; sure, it guarantees education a "seat at the table," but it's an irrelevant table...
...Republicans talked a lot about eliminating Cabinet agencies like Energy, Education and HUD, but big government is extraordinarily resilient, and these days there's not much talk about eliminating anything. But even if streamlining government is a political non-starter, streamlining the Cabinet could be relatively easy. A Secretary of the Environment could represent EPA and Interior. (You could throw in the Forest Service - currently in Agriculture - and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - inexplicably at Commerce - as well.) A Secretary of Government Services could represent HHS, HUD, the VA, Education and maybe Agriculture's nutrition programs. A Secretary...
...This still would not qualify as "strong action"; at best, it would lay the groundwork for strong action. But in Washington, creating a Cabinet-level position is the kind of thing you do as a substitute for strong action. The only surer way to guarantee that the problem remains unsolved would be to create a blue-ribbon commission to study...