7. Make sure that loyalists are the key players in dealing with Congress.
Over the years, career officials at every agency will establish close relations with Hill staffers and key members of Congress. This makes sense: These are the men and women who determine their budgets, have the power to investigate them, and can block the road to high positions requiring confirmation. These relationships last not just years but decades -- and they threaten presidential power.
The only effective way to observe, influence, and sometimes interfere with these relationships is to ensure that the legislative liaison offices in the various departments and agencies are manned by loyalists who report to the central White House Office of Legislative Affairs.
These figures must be conditioned to see that White House office, not offices and officials in their own building, as their central connection in life. This will require a system of rewards and punishments, as well as constant contact through daily phone calls and frequent meetings. They must see that they are members of the president's legislative team who happen to be stationed at the State or Defense department, rather than State or Defense department officials who happen to be handling the Hill.
The State Department's legislative bureau has for decades been regarded as weak, and one reason is that career diplomats often staff it. In addition to disliking the work and not being very good at it, those officers often have very little idea how to protect a president's priorities. Why should they? How can they be expected to know the members of Congress and understand the political processes on the Hill? They may have been in China during the last election and may well be in Jordan for the next, and their focus is less on the chief executive than on the needs of their colleagues and superiors within the State Department.
Just think for a moment about the investigation into the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. As State Department legislative liaisons conferred with Capitol Hill and prepared Clinton's testimony, were they thinking about advancing the Obama White House's best interests, or about protecting Clinton -- and their own friends of many years who may have been affected by the attack?
Relations with Congress are too important to be ignored by top officials -- and far too important to be left to career agency officials who will protect their agencies more than the president.
SUBJECTS:
