Flops Are No Fluke in the Annals of Political Payback

Senate scrutiny of many nominees is almost pro forma, especially these days when one party is dominant in Washington, said Steven L. Katz, a former Democratic staffer on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. The attitude is "if the president wants them, the president has got to live with them," Katz said.

The phenomenon also owes to a personnel operation that often values political credentials over managerial ability, said Katz, a senior adviser in Clinton's presidential personnel office in 1994.

"They are not an executive search firm; they are a political search firm," Katz said. "When I worked in the Clinton administration, the influences came from the vice president's office, the first lady's office, the president's office, major political handlers, and then, don't forget, every member of the House and Senate will write in with a request."

The fruits of such a process are not hard to see.

Take Christopher B. Burnham, a former investment banker and Bush fundraiser who this year was tapped to be undersecretary for the department of management at the United Nations. Burnham caused a stir in July when he said that, professionally, his "primary loyalty is to the United States." The United Nations quickly issued a "clarification on his behalf," saying that Burnham took an oath of loyalty to the United Nations and "understands that his professional obligation is to the United Nations and the Secretary-General."

During the Clinton era, White House director of administration David Watkins lasted just over a year before he was forced to resign in May 1994 after famously taking the presidential helicopter for a golf outing near Camp David. Watkins, the chief financial officer of Clinton's 1992 campaign, was a longtime friend of Clinton's from his home town of Hope, Ark., and a sometime business associate of Hillary Rodham Clinton's in the 1980s.

Favored but under-credentialed appointees often are dispatched to "turkey farms," select corners of federal agencies where it is presumed they can do little harm, said political scientist Donald F. Kettl of the University of Pennsylvania. It does not always work out that way, as Brown's stint at FEMA illustrates.

"People who run for the presidency often put so much emphasis on the race that they forget to stop to ask themselves what they are going to do with the prize when they get it," Kettl said. "They forget that so much of the work of government is governing. But every once in a while, we have a case like this where really truly terrible things happen because of a lack of capacity. And then we have to learn the lesson all over again that the game isn't over when the election is done."