The Foreign Service Journal, June 2017

44 JUNE 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Service officer when making the choice. It certainly wasn’t the case when Colin Pow- ell succeeded me. The president looked upon him as an individual. He had worked with him; he had confidence in him. I don’t think that there is any institutional bias in the White House against picking FSOs as national security advisors. On the other hand, the various presidents, from time to time, have expressed views about the Foreign Service, not all of which have been complimentary. To the best of your knowledge, how has Cabinet-level decision-making involving the State Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council changed in the past two years? What is the role of ideology today? All I can do is address the current situation. I think most people are agreed that the working relationships between State, Defense and the National Security Council have never been better. When we are in town, [Secretary of State] George [Shultz], [National Security Council Chairman] Colin [Powell] and I meet every morning at 7 a.m. Nobody else is in the room, which is unusual in itself. I can’t recall this ever happening before. We compare notes every day, and on Mondays we talk about longer-range matters. We are in constant communication. This doesn’t mean we agree all the time. Where we disagree, we sort it out in private. So, my own feeling is that the relationships are now excellent. As far as ideology is concerned, it’s the president who sets the tone for the administration; it’s his responsibility to deal with the broad policy issues, the public posture and the role of ideology. The secretaries of Defense and State, and the national security advisor are not independent entities; we are appointed by the president to respond to his guidance. Given the enormous and sprawling nature of government departments, what thoughts do you—as the head of the largest of these—have on controlling policy activities across a wide array of complex issues? The key throughout my years has been to appoint good people, and change them if they don’t work out. What you have to do once you move into one of these jobs is to make your person- nel moves quickly, because if you don’t, you get caught up in the day-to-day business and never make them. I’ve been a little handicapped in this job because of the pro- longed confirmation process and it being so late in the adminis- tration, I haven’t been able to make a large number of changes. I have made some. Anyone who comes into an agency—even a modest- sized one—thinking he can run it all by himself is in for a very rough time. Also, to the degree that you can, you have to make sure that the lines of responsibility and accountability are clear. That’s always a problem in government because Con- gress—particularly with the Department of Defense— likes to interfere with those lines. There’s hardly a bill that comes out of Congress that doesn’t have some operational change for the Defense Department. Finally, you need to motivate your people so that they can assume the full degree of responsibility they are accorded. Fifteen years ago you said that some of the finest manage- ment talent in the world serves in the federal government. Would youmake the same claim today? I think yes. I think we have very fine management talent, but I have to say in all candor that sometimes I think we’re losing it. It’s very hard to get people to serve in the government today. It’s much harder than it was 15 years ago. There’s the question of compensa- tion, which is a very real question. There’s the question of divesti- ture. There’s the question of constant exposure to public criticism. But probably most serious of all is that the process itself has become so complicated. It’s very difficult to get somebody through the process, and it becomes increasingly hard to achieve your goals. Most people come into the government because they’re goal-oriented, they have a certain amount of idealism, a certain amount of conviction, and want to achieve something. Now, today, with the tension between the executive and legislative branches, with all the regulations and legislation, and the tendency for every policy decision to become public before it is necessarily finalized or can be defended, it is very difficult to accomplish things. Also, there’s the tendency of some politicians in both parties to make government employees political scape- goats. I think we have good people, but we need to worry about retaining them.