Diversity Means
Many Things to Bush Diversity Means
Many Things to Bush
Thursday March 29 4:32 PM ET
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush apparently wants a government that not only looks like America but argues like America - and didn't all come from the same law school. Diversity in presidential appointments means many things to Bush beyond hiring women and minorities, Clay Johnson, his point man for filling top jobs, said Thursday.
Explaining the head-butting starting to be heard in the White House, Johnson said Bush intentionally picked high-horsepower people whose opinions were bound to be diverse. ``He likes that variety of thought,'' he said. Foreign policy disagreements have emerged between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, among other episodes of friction. As well, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman lost a high-profile effort to get Bush to honor his campaign promise to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
``You want that tension,'' Johnson said, putting the best face on disputes all presidents hear but prefer to keep quiet. ``There are supposed to be differences of perspective in any kind of dynamic organization. We got 'em.'' Johnson, director of the White House office responsible for presidential appointments, offered a peek inside that work-in-progress in an appearance at the Brookings Institution.
Bush has announced names of about a quarter of the close to 500 senior officials who require Senate confirmation. So far, 25 have been confirmed. Despite his abbreviated transition, Bush is about as far along as President Clinton was at this point in his first term. White House staffers involved in appointments are mindful of Bush's interest in finding people of different backgrounds. But on occasion, sameness on the slate gets by them.
When four names for an unidentified job or jobs were given to Bush, he complained, according to Johnson, ``Do you realize everyone you're talking about went to Harvard?'' Johnson reflected the Republican ambivalence about affirmative action but said a mix of races and sexes is important to Bush. He said the White House has no ``magic scorecard'' but, within sections of government, considers the racial or sexual makeup of the top staff. Appointment managers will ask, ``What is the diversity of that team?''
He gave a hypothetical, if improbable, example: If a department's senior staff were almost all women, he said, the question would be asked, ``Wouldn't it make sense to have a male or two?'' The Cabinet itself is at least as diverse as that of Clinton, who started out vowing to build a Cabinet and staff that ``look like America.''
But much policy-making and implementation go on at sub-Cabinet levels, by department deputies, bureau directors and the like, and Bush's outreach will also be judged there. Of the 134 people announced so far by Bush, 104 are men. Johnson said about 230 people in all have been recommended to the president by his staff, and he thinks about 30 percent are women and 20 to 25 percent are black, Hispanic or Asian.
Bush hopes to have his appointments in place by the August congressional recess. Paul Light, head of a Brookings-sponsored study of Bush's appointments, identified one kind of diversity that has not received much attention by a number of presidents - recruiting people from outside Washington. Over the last 15 years, more than 60 percent of top administration posts have been filled by Washington insiders, Light said.
These days, ``You've got a professional class of presidential appointees.'' At the highest level of advisers, Bush has achieved a mix that includes fellow Texans such as Johnson, Washington veterans such as Powell and Rumsfeld, and former governors Whitman of New Jersey and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin. But the professional class has predominated in recent years in sub-Cabinet positions.
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