There's not a whole lot of guidance about what day to day governing should look like. Maybe the delegates to the [? Maybe Washington was in the room, and they were uncomfortable discussing limitations to his activities. It's hard to say because they didn't necessarily write it down, but whatever the reason, much was left up to him to determine what to do once he was in office and to figure out what worked best. The delegates basically gave the president two options: One was that he could consult with the Senate on foreign affairs, the other was that he could request written advice from the department secretaries about issues pertaining to their departments.
Washington very quickly concluded that those options just weren't sufficient or prompt enough. They didn't allow for the complex dialogue that was necessary to deal with the issues in front of him.
So he created the cabinet to provide the support and advice that he needed. No legislation, no constitutional amendment created any of these things.
The idea of direct reports is pretty common, and it would have been the management style that Washington was familiar with as a general.
Why wasn't that the obvious way to proceed from the beginning? The government form that these people were familiar with at the time was the British system, which had ministers that held seats in Parliament, while at the same time they were serving as the king's advisors. They had a seat in power in the legislature while also serving as advisors.
That was something that Americans were very cautious to try and avoid. They really thought of the department secretaries as being mini-bureaucrats that would help take care of some details and would report on those issues to the president. Initially, they didn't want the secretaries meeting with the president secretly and providing advice because they thought that that would encourage corruption and might allow them to avoid taking responsibility for their decisions.
If decisions were made behind closed doors, there wouldn't be transparency at the highest levels of government. So the delegates put very clearly [in the Constitution? He wanted a system where he could issue an order, and the secretaries would give him their opinions or at least if they needed more time, then they would write a written opinion. He needed something that was more immediate, because the issues facing the executive were incredibly complicated and unprecedented. When historians write about this period of the United States, after the Constitution was adopted and the formative years of Washington's administration, they often use terms like energy and efficiency.
Is that to draw a contrast with the old, baggy, loose central government under the Articles of Confederation? Under the Articles of Confederation, legislators?
So Washington and many of the initial office holders, including many members of the cabinet, were really pushing for an executive that had the ability to put forth a solution and pursue that solution with energy. They felt that in times of crisis, you needed that energetic, quick moving president. They had a great sense that having most power delegated to the states on a day-to-day basis was fine and made sense, but in times of crisis, they couldn't have 13 governors competing to establish policy because then [the nation would] have this very conflicting approach to what's going on.
In times of war, when you're talking about diplomacy, if you're talking about negotiation and trade or disease, you need one voice speaking for everyone.
The decade begins the expansion of what the government is actually going to look like. The people in office are faced with constitutional questions that had never come up before. They're faced with the first international crises. They're trying to figure out what diplomacy is going to look like, what neutrality is going to look like.
They're faced with the first domestic insurrection, the Whiskey Rebellion , which is a huge challenge. They're faced with the first presidential elections, which will turn over power. On September 11, , George Washington sent his first cabinet nomination to the Senate.
Just minutes later, the Senate approved the appointment of Alexander Hamilton unanimously as the Secretary of the Treasury. When Washington signed the Judiciary Act of , he not only created the federal judiciary but also founded the office of Attorney General. One prominent individual who did not attend cabinet meetings was Vice President John Adams. In fact, Adams found his role as vice president to be so tedious that he once referred to it as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
The cabinet was often filled with tension, particularly between Jefferson and Hamilton, surrounding the question of a national bank. Despite the acrimony, Jefferson believed that the tone had little impact on governance, explaining that "The pain was for Hamilton and myself, but the public experienced no inconvenience. Eisenhower solidified that practice three decades later.
Today, the Cabinet consists of the vice president, plus the heads of the 15 executive departments. In theory, Cabinet meetings serve as a forum for exchanging ideas, resolving interdepartmental disputes and maintaining administrative coherence.
All are responsible for running their massive executive departments, which together employ more than 4 million people, and many provide key advice to the president on an individual basis. Cabinet members moreover play a key political role, providing public support for White House policies and technical expertise in implementing them. And while a competent Cabinet can enhance a presidency, the opposite is likewise true. When did the White House first get plumbing?
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