The White House Office of Presidential Personnel

One of the first things that a president-elect must worry about is having in place an effective personnel recruitment operation.(1) This function is so important that the planning for it must begin well before the election, even though there is a danger that setting up the operation may appear presumptuous if news of it gets into the press. As Pendleton James, President Reagan's personnel recruiter in 1980-81 said, "The guys in the campaign were only worried about one thing: the election night. I was only worrying about one thing: election morning." "Presidential personnel cannot wait for the election because presidential personnel has to be functional on the first day, the first minute of the first hour." But "it has to be behind-the-scenes, not part of the campaign and certainly not known to the public" (James interview). Former presidential assistant Bonnie Newman was asked, "In the period before the election, how much of the identifying of jobs can be done?" Her answer: "You can do almost 100% of it." This article will present an overview of the Office of Presidential Personnel (OPP) and how it functions during the transition and early months of a new presidential administration. We will first set out the scope of the job by specifying the number and types of political appointments for which the OPP is responsible. Next, some background on how the office has developed in recent years will be presented, along with the responsibilities of its director. Each administration's OPP faces predictable challenges in the form of pressures for appointments from the Hill, the campaign, and cabinet secretaries; these typical areas of concern will be examined. Finally, obligations of the OPP after initial recruitment has been accomplished will be examined. Our conclusion is that the responsibilities of the OPP are crucial to the success of each president and that the better prepared the new director is, the better he or she will serve the president. Scope of the OPP The person who will serve as director of this office ideally will have been designated early: even (perhaps secretively) as soon as the nominating convention concludes or, at the latest--publicly--immediately after election day. Whenever chosen, the same question faces the OPP designee: what are the tasks he or she must undertake before inauguration day--and after? There are several such tasks and some of them should be undertaken well before inauguration. The Size and Shape of the Noncareer Universe What categories of positions are filled by political appointment, and how many positions are there in each category? The following table shows the four categories and nine subcategories and the numbers of positions in each. Category I: full-time positions (almost all established by statute) that are filled by personal presidential appointment Subcategory I-A (PAS): presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation: cabinet secretaries and agency heads, deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries; plus members of regulatory commissions, 185 ambassadors, 94 district attorneys, 94 U.S. marshals, 15 in international organizations, 4 in the legislative branch 1,125 Subcategory I-B: presidential appointees not requiring Senate confirmation (PA) 20 Subcategory I-C: federal judges to be appointed (the typical number of vacancies that need to be filled during a presidential term out of a total of 868 federal judges), all of which are PAS positions and most of which have lifetime tenure 200 Category II: full-time, nonpresidential, noncareer positions (appointments made by agency heads but only with the sanction of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel [OPP]) Subcategory II-A: noncareer positions in the Senior Executive Service (SES) (upper-level positions; see description in "Some Facts about Noncareer Positions," below) 720 Subcategory II-B: Schedule C positions (midlevel positions; see description in "Some Facts about Noncareer Positions," below) 1,428 Category III: part-time presidential appointee positions (established in statute-members of advisory boards and commissions) Subcategory III-A: PAS 490 Subcategory III-B: PA 1,859 Total of Categories I, II, and III: the noncareer universe of concern to the White House OPP 5,842 Category IV: White House staff positions (only partially limited by statute) (the OPP does not handle appointments in Category IV) Subcategory IV-A: receiving formal, signed commissions from the president (assistants to the president and deputy assistants to the president) 80 Subcategory IV-B: appointed under presidential authority (special assistants to the president and below, that is, members of the White House staff, including the first lady's staff; the vice president's staff; and the domestic policy, economic policy, and national security council staffs) (excludes civilian and military detailees, secret service, and other professional support staffs, White House fellows, interns, volunteers) 556 The total noncareer universe: positions that can be filled by the White House during a typical presidential term 6,478 Source: Patterson (2000, 220) Some Facts about Noncareer Positions The PAS (presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation) and PA (presidential appointees not requiring Senate confirmation) positions in Category I, including most federal judgeships (also Category I), and the memberships on part-time advisory boards and commissions (Category III) are created in statute. …