Secretary Who?

The President's Invisible Cabinet

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson made news recently when he regaled a Dallas audience with a story about canceling a HUD contract because the contractor did not support President Bush. When critics noted that the secretary's conduct appeared to violate federal law, he claimed he had made up the story, which was not really exculpatory, since it still sounded like a warning to his listeners to support Bush or else lose their federal contracts.

The bizarre episode is now under investigation, but regardless of the result, it raises an important question for the Bush administration:

Alphonso who?

Jackson oversees a department with a $34 billion budget, and the lead responsibility for housing the poor in an era of soaring rents, but you probably wouldn't have known that if his mouth hadn't outpaced his brain during that speech in Dallas. That's because he's part of Bush's Cabinet, which consists of Condoleezza Rice, Donald H. Rumsfeld and a group of faceless bureaucrats with the Q ratings of the extras in a Rob Schneider movie. The average member of the witness protection program is arguably more recognizable than Bush's agriculture secretary, who is . . .

"If you give me 15 minutes, I'm sure I'll come up with the name," said New York University government professor Paul Light, an expert in the bureaucracy of the executive branch. "Let me think. It's escaping me right now."

Time's up: It's Mike Johanns.

"That's right!" Light said. "From Nebraska. The former governor. It's funny: You get a position in this Cabinet and you're never heard from again."

Bush's first-term Cabinet had a bit of star power: Colin L. Powell at the State Department, plus familiar politicians such as Christine Todd Whitman heading the Environmental Protection Agency, John D. Ashcroft at Justice, Tommy G. Thompson at Health and Human Services and Tom Ridge at Homeland Security. They're all gone now, partly because they've learned that being a Bush Cabinet secretary is not a very powerful job. Today, the head of EPA is . . . any guesses as to who's in charge of the agency responsible for protecting America's air and water?

"I haven't the faintest idea," said Stephen Hess, an executive-branch scholar at the Brookings Institution. "Wait . . . Stephen Johnson."

Impressive!

"Well, I've got a cheat sheet in front of me," Hess confessed. "This is really a Cabinet full of nobodies."

Light and Hess agree that as Cabinets have grown in size, from President George Washington's five-man Cabinet to Bush's 21 Cabinet-level aides today, they have shrunk in stature, a descending line from Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to John P. Walters and Jim Nicholson. (What, you didn't know Bush's drug czar and his secretary of veterans affairs?)