Once every four years a hot new book, largely unknown to the general public, makes the rounds of Washington, D.C. and environs. It’s known as The Plum Book, and in a way it’s a shame it isn’t made available to every jobseeker in America. For inside its covers lies a gold mine — a listing of thousands of presidentially appointed jobs in the federal government. The newest edition is due out soon.
As the Bush administration begins a second term, there will be holdovers from the first, but there also will be plenty of replacements — appointees taking posts everywhere from the West Wing to West Virginia making decisions about foreign policy, food safety, national standards for air quality and for air travel, and everything in between. Like every administration since the birth of patronage, this one will fill those slots with friends, fundraisers and political allies who share common views on social, economic, environmental, security and education issues. Inevitably, those appointees will carry baggage that the public deserves to know about, but seldom learns about. And that’s where the press corps comes in — at a minimum, it’s their duty to keep us informed as the candy gets passed out. (After all, it’s we the taxpayers who pay for the candy every April 15.)
Last May, Anne C. Mulkern of the Denver Post‘s Washington bureau documented the presence of a hundred-plus high-level officials in the Bush administration “who helped govern industries [that] they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates.”
In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates.
The president’s political appointees are making or overseeing profound changes affecting drug laws, food policies, land use, clean-air regulations and other key issues.
Among them, according to Mulkern: Ann-Marie Lynch, who moved from a job as a drug-industry lobbyist who fought price controls to a post at Health and Human Services, where she helped decide prescription-drug policies; Charles Lambert, a one-time lobbyist for the meat industry who claimed mad cow disease was not a human health threat; and J. Steven Griles, a lobbyist for oil and gas clients, appointed to the number-two job at the Department of Interior, which oversees national parks and rangeland, including the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The problem goes far beyond Lynch, Lambert and Griles. Appointees filling scores of obscure committees and advisory panels have tremendous influence on our everyday lives, and their work goes largely unreported, toiling as they do far outside the media spotlight. Last spring, Alden Meyer, writing in the Union of Concerned Scientists magazine Catalyst, reported that in the first Bush administration those jobs often were doled out not to the best and the brightest researchers and policy advisors, but to scientists who espoused the political views of the White House. He provides numerous examples of ideology trumping independence.
Scientists, doctors, and other experts both inside and outside the government accuse officials within the George W. Bush administration of suppressing or distorting scientific and medical information when it conflicts with their policy objectives.
In addition, the president’s political appointees have placed people with questionable credentials on federal scientific advisory committees, and have favored candidates put forward by industry over those recommended by professional agency staff.
Adding to the criticisms, the National Academy of Sciences last month accused the Bush administration of meddling in scientific advisory boards, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s science writer John Mangles reported:
In a strongly worded report and public comments last week, members of a National Academies of Science and Engineering panel said quizzing candidates for federal science advisory committees about their voting record or party affiliation or whether they agree with the president’s policies is “not relevant” and in some cases may be illegal.
Asking such questions is “no more appropriate … than to ask them other personal information that is immaterial, such as hair color or height,” the nonpartisan panel’s chairman, former U.S. Rep. John Porter, an Illinois Republican, said at a news briefing.
Reporters like Mulkern, Mangles, and Meyer are far from the front lines of glamour journalism. You won’t see them on CNN trying to one-up Tucker Carlson, or even on page one of the New York Times elbowing aside stories about which pretty face will be the next anchor at CBS. But their stories, revealing policy-making bodies rife with conflicts of interest, are more than just good journalism. They are public service at the highest level.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.