Introduction: When the Phone Rings

Your phone rings, and it’s the White House calling, or perhaps the transition office of the president-elect: “We’re looking to fill a senior position in the new administration, and we understand that you’re one of the best, most knowledgeable people in your field. Are you interested?”

How do you react?

You’re honored and flattered, of course. You may have been hoping for this call and doing everything possible to make sure it would come. Or it’s possible that this summons has arrived out of the blue. Either way, there’s a new president in town, and he wants you to join his management team. If you’ve always wanted to perform public service, this is a golden opportunity.

But you’re also apprehensive. You’ve heard the stories about how long and difficult the confirmation process has become, how it can take months for the FBI to investigate your background, then additional months for the Senate to confirm you — or even longer if a senator decides to hold you “hostage” in a policy fight or simply doesn’t like your background. You may know someone whose confirmation became an unseemly ordeal.

Maybe you have more questions than answers, and you’re not certain how to make up your mind. You want to find out what this would mean for you, your family and the people you work with, both now and after you complete your stint in government. Or you definitely want the job but need more information about filling out the required forms, navigating the Senate and, perhaps, relocating to Washington.

If you fit into any (or all) of these categories, then you are precisely the person we had in mind when writing A Survivor’s Guide for Presidential Nominees.

A collaboration between The Presidential Appointee Initiative, a project of the Brookings Institution funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the nonprofit, nonpartisan Council for Excellence in Government, the Guide attempts to answer virtually every question a nominee might have upon being asked to serve. It draws upon the experiences of dozens of senior off icials who served in six administrations over the past t h ree decades, as well as on numerous reports by academics and blue-ribbon commissions. The purpose is to ensure that nominees hit the ground running.

Visit A Survivor's Guide for Presidential Nominees Download Page

You can download full publication in PDF format.

Published in November 2000 by
The Presidential Appointee Initiative
A Project of the Brookings Institution funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts
1730 Rhode Island Avenue, NW
Suite 301
Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 496-1330

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword 3
Acknowledgments 5
Introduction: When the Phone Rings 9
The Changing of the Guard 9
Getting the Most Out of the Guide 10
The Burdens and Blessings of Public Service 11
The Best Jobs They Ever Had 11
Glossary of Appointed Positions 13
Chapter 1: First Things First 15
Do I want this job? 15
Am I the right person for this position? 18
What are the financial and personal ramifications,
including restrictions on post-government employment? 21
What kind of help will I need to get through the nomination and confirmation process? 24
Do I want to live in Washington? 27
Why do I need a fallback strate gy? 28
Chapter 2: People and Places Along the Way 31
Stages of the Appointments Process 31
Stage One: Selection 31
Stage Two: Clearance 33
StageThree: Nomination 34
Stage Four: Confirmation 35
Key Gatekeepers 37
The Transition Team 37
White House Office of Presidential Personnel 38
Office of the Counsel to the President 40
U.S. Office of Government Ethics 42
The Senate 44
Chapter 3: Forms and Financial Disclosure 51
What Do I Have to Fill Out? 51
Getting Prepared Now 52
Key Forms 54
White House Personal Data Statement Questionnaire 54
SF 86 Questionnaire for National Security Positions 54
SF 278 Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report 55
Coping With the Forms 57
Chapter 4: Navigating the Senate 65
No Way to Tell 65
Courting the Senate 67
The Senate’s Forms 69
The Confirmation Hearing 70
Holding Patterns 71
The Nomination Battles 73
Chapter 5: Before and After You’re Confirmed – Ethical and Legal Considerations 77
Coming Aboard Before Senate Confirmation 78
The Ethical and Legal Minefields 82
Chapter 6: Dealing with the Media 89
The Capital of the News World 89
When in Doubt, Don’t Talk 92
Telling the Truth 93
Chapter 7: Moving to Washington 97
An Area Overview 97
What to do When Waiting for Confirmation 98
Where to Live? 100
Schools 101
Big-City Problems 102
Big-City Advantages 103
Chapter 8: Life After Government 107
Key Employment Restrictions 108
A Bar to Public Service? 109
Ethical Examples 110
The Strength of America’s System 111
Chapter 9: Resources 115
Resources on Appointed Positions 115
Congressional Information Sources 116
Ethics and Rules 118
Forms 118
Key Executive Branch Offices 119
Media Sources 120
Books/Papers 121
Appendix I: The Owner’s Manual: A Brief Look at the Constitution 123
Appendix II: Advice and Consent – And Rejections 127
Appendix III: Sample Questions Asked by Senate Committees 131
Appendix IV: Standard Form 278: Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report 135
Appendix V: Standard Form 86: Questionnaire for National Security Positions 155
Index 169

FORWARD

From its very founding, American government has depended on presidential appointees to help lead the nation. The Founding Fathers clearly believed that the quality of a president’s appointments could make or break their young democracy. “There is nothing I am so anxious about as good nominations,” Thomas Jefferson wrote at the dawn of his presidency in 1801, “conscious that the merit as well as reputation of an administration depends as much on that as on its measures.”

Having designed a government that depended on the wisdom and virtue of individual citizens, the Founders left their own private lives behind to take the first presidential appointments. They fully understood that presidential service would be difficult and inconvenient. They also understood that entering office might involve tough questions from the U.S. Senate about their qualifications for office. Yet the Founders understood that presidential service was both an obligation of citizenship and one of the greatest honors of their lives. They recognized that the young nation would not survive if its most talented citizens rejected the call to service.

More than 200 years later, the merit and reputation of an administration still depend on this willingness to serve. Presidential service is still inconvenient and often financially punishing, and the U.S. Senate still asks tough questions about qualifications for office. Yet, just as in the 1790s, presidential service is still one of the nation’s greatest honors. The jobs may be stressful, the pay sometimes less than one could have earned in private endeavors and the public scrutiny intense, but presidential service is still essential to the nation’s survival.

That is why we have published A Survivor’s Guide for Presidential Nominees. A collaboration between The Council for Excellence in Government and The Presidential Appointee Initiative, and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the G u i d e is designed to help individuals accept the call to service by providing nonpart is an information on what has become an increasingly complicated, and sometimes confusing, appointments process.

The Guide is based on the simple notion that good government is impossible if presidents cannot attract the nation’s most talented citizens into service. As another of this nation’s original citizen servants, Alexander Hamilton, warned 200 years ago in The Federalist Papers, “a government ill-executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be in practice a bad government.” The American people cannot have confidence in the promises their leaders make if those leaders cannot attract talented citizens to join the government and work to fulfill those promises. To the extent the Guide helps those citizens help themselves as they navigate the nomination and confirmation process, the nation can only benefit.

The Guide is only one piece of The Presidential Appointee Initiative (PAI). Established by the Brookings Institution in 1999 with an advisory board co-chaired by former Office of Management and Budget Director Franklin D. Raines and former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker, PAI is committed to making the presidential appointments process easier, faster and more respectful toward the people who have accepted the call to service. PAI is also working to remind America’s civic and corporate leaders that presidential service remains one of the nation’s highest honors, and one that they should encourage their most talented leaders to both pursue and accept.

PAI’s collaborator on the Guide is The Council for Excellence in Government. Founded in 1983, CEG is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the performance of government at all levels, as well as government’s place in the lives and esteem of American citizens.

Ultimately, the willingness to serve resides in each citizen’s heart. Like the Founders themselves, citizens must be ready to accept the sacrifices of service to make American democracy succeed. The nation is much stronger today than it was during those first moments of vulnerability in the 1790s, but it is no less dependent on the talents and commitments of its citizen leaders.

Michael H. Armacost
President
The Brookings Institution

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment