presidents

People who come to Washington with the goal of reforming government have little appreciation for the immense power and political sophistication of the federal employee network and its allies and the intensity of its resistance to serious change. The organization’s personnel rules make it hard to fire poor workers and hard to reward the good ones. In addition, courts have ruled that federal employees have property rights in their jobs, and can only be …

…based on job performance and only as long as federal benefits remain generous and untouched. The new President will need to implement a careful strategy to carry out a serious agenda for change. A serious agenda of managerial change, changing the way government works, will necessitate the President's adoption of the cabinet government model, the model of political administration championed by Eisenhower and Reagan, rather than the public administration model promoted by Wilson. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**