White House Top-Dog Jobs Go Begging

Compared to the upheavals and rivalries that rumbled through previous presidential staffs in their first year, President Bush has presided over a relatively stable White House.

But as Bush completes his first year in office, the rest of his government is far from settled: About one-third of the top jobs remain vacant.

Of 508 positions requiring Senate confirmation--the most senior jobs, which set policy and carry out directions from the Oval Office--306 have been filled by the president’s nominees. An additional 42, many in the State Department and the CIA, are occupied by Clinton administration holdovers.

Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, has dubbed the 158 unfilled positions the “confirmation gap” to put a spotlight on the Senate’s failure to speed the nominees into office. “Particularly in foreign policy, this is a troubling development,” he said.

Many vacancies are in domestic policy areas, where the administration’s interest in pressing ahead with new policies may be waning. According to Paul C. Light, director of the government studies program at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington, the vacancies at the Interior, Labor and Agriculture departments and the Environmental Protection Agency “may reflect thinking that it is better to have no one in there than someone who will push things forward.”

Most recent administrations have ended their first year with positions unfilled for several reasons, including the growing number of jobs requiring Senate confirmation and the political wrangling that occurs when the White House and Senate are in different hands.

Even Terror-Related Jobs Go Unfilled

This year, though, there are added factors. Traditionally, a ready source of applicants for executive branch jobs are congressional staff members, but many may feel reluctant to leave their bosses in the lurch, with both the House and Senate closely divided and an election year approaching. And since Sept. 11, the administration’s primary focus has been the war against terrorism.

But even anti-terrorism-related jobs remain empty. Among the positions for which no one has even been nominated are two that stand front-and-center of the domestic side of the anti-terrorism war: the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

The FDA job is particularly sensitive, given the agency’s role in approving vaccines and other medicines that may be needed as preventive measures against bioterrorism. One proposed nominee drew sharp criticism on Capitol Hill because of his ties to the pharmaceutical industry, and the White House reportedly stepped back from a fight.

In addition, the jobs of deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration and of assistant secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict remain open.

In some circumstances, controversy over nominees has stalled their progress through Senate committees and on to a vote in the full chamber.

The Senate has balked at confirming Otto J. Reich as assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, over objections to his role in supporting the rebels who fought Nicaragua’s Sandinista government during the Reagan administration.

Eugene Scalia’s objections to ergonomics policies that the Clinton administration designed to protect workers has blocked his nomination as the Labor Department’s solicitor.

Both may be given recess appointments, placing them in the jobs for a year and thus circumventing the Senate. Such a step could be taken any day by the president, who is spending the holiday break at his ranch here.

And even before the White House has finished the first round of appointments, it must focus on a second round: The deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sean O’Keefe, has been nominated to head NASA. No replacement for his budget office job has been named, and the budget chief, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., has run into enough complaints on Capitol Hill to cause some there to question how long he will remain.

Staff Seems More Stable Than Previous Ones

The White House staff has weathered its freshman year without encountering the hasty departures of some key players, as occurred early in the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Ronald Reagan kept most of his top staff in place for his first term, but it was riven at times by rivalries and distrust between those hewing to a strict conservative ideology and others more mindful of practical politics.

Even the president’s father, George Bush, who put a premium on civility among aides, went through three chiefs of staff in four years.

Given its predecessors, the current White House staff has been remarkable for showing no deep divisions. Just as remarkable: If such divisions exist, the staff has managed to keep them from surfacing in public.

But Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., who was a deputy staff chief during the previous Bush administration, has twice in recent months signaled that he may not last the full term, though he later said he would not leave until the president wanted him to.

His comments, though, were a reminder of the shifts that shake up any White House staff. “The half-life for a chief of staff is two years,” Card said in Boston on Nov. 1. “There are very few people who had the experience I am having that survived very long, and that is appropriate. There is no security. I will not vest in the pension system at the White House.”

And elsewhere, the talk is not of leaving but of those who haven’t yet arrived.

Fleischer complained that “the president deserves to have his team in place, particularly during a time of war, and the American people deserve to have their government fully staffed.”

“The president has done his part, and when the Senate returns” next month from the winter recess, he said, “it’s important that they do theirs.”

But Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said that in many cases the nominations have been delayed by the White House.

“In many cases, they weren’t vetted properly,” he said. “In many cases, the paperwork hadn’t been turned over.”