Cabinet moves to consolidate control

At the very least, it appears Bush won't follow the dubious example of Richard Nixon. Almost paranoid about what he perceived as a lack of loyalty among his cabinet and subcabinet appointees, he demanded they all submit letters of resignation following his reelection. He kept only five cabinet holdovers, and enforced loyalty through such moves as having his confidant Henry Kissinger serve as both national security adviser and secretary of State.

Nixon may have been an extreme example, but experience shows that a first-term chief executive looks at cabinet staffing in a very different manner than one facing the beginning of a second term.

First cabinets reflect the face a new administration wants to present to the nation. Ethnic and geographic balance is important, as well as payback. John Ashcroft, at the time of his appointment, was widely seen as someone who would be amenable to the social conservatives who have been among Bush's most enthusiastic supporters. Colin Powell, a celebrity in his own right, was a pick likely designed to bring the new team policy gravitas.

Four years later the calculations are different. The appointment of Mr. Gonzales may well excite Hispanics, who supported Bush and the GOP in 2004 to an unprecedented degree. But it also means that the White House is unlikely to be surprised by Justice Department pronouncements about the arrest of suspected terrorists, as it sometimes was during the Ashcroft era.

Ms. Rice will be the first African- American woman to serve in the nation's highest diplomatic post. But she also has detailed knowledge of Bush's thinking on foreign policy matters, given that she spends many weekends at Camp David with the president and his family. She's less likely than Mr. Powell to clash with other key figures - such as Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney - on key matters of war and diplomacy.

In general, the importance of the cabinet as a forum of advice and font of power has been declining in recent decades. In this respect, it's important to distinguish between the inner cabinet - State, Defense, Treasury, and perhaps a few others - and the outer cabinet of less important departments. Agriculture is a bedrock US industry, to be sure, but its presence in the inner circle of US power is something of an anachronism, note experts.

Decisionmaking in the US government has become more and more centralized in the White House as a matter of necessity, given the speed and complexity of decisions in the modern world. The idea of so-called cabinet government - in which all secretaries weigh in on all matters of importance - is impractical, concluded experts at a Brookings Institution seminar on the subject in 2000.

Cabinet departments today are generally relegated to the implementation of policy, not its development, noted Harvard professor emeritus Richard Neustadt at the time. Presidents should "cushion cabinet members against the shock of discovering that they are not going to be the president's chief policy advisers," he said.

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