Spending Time at White House Required

WaPo reported President Bush is requiring Cabinet members to spend several hours a week at the White House compound, a move top aides say eases coordination with government agencies but one seen by some analysts as fresh evidence of the White House's tightening grip over administration policy.

Under a directive instituted by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. at the start of Bush's second term, Cabinet secretaries spend as many as four hours a week working out of an office suite set up for them at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House. There, they meet with presidential policy and communications aides in an effort to better coordinate the administration's initiatives and messages....

Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, sees its purpose differently.... "I find it absolutely shocking that they would have regular office hours at the White House. It confirms how little the domestic Cabinet secretaries have to do with making policy."

If the President refused to ever speak to his Cabinet Secretaries one might make that statement, but if they are required to have regular office hours at the White House they certainly have an opportuinty to make their thoughts known, both to the President and to his staff.

Some scholars said the new office-hours requirement continues a trend in which Cabinet secretaries have become less architects of policy than purveyors of initiatives hatched by the political and policy officials in the White House. During the Eisenhower administration, for example, officials hashed out national policy during weekly Cabinet meetings. Now, the Cabinet meets irregularly -- maybe once every 45 days, Healy said -- and those sessions are mostly ceremonial.

And now, rather than meeting in a large room with other Cabinet Secretaries they interface weekly with presidential policy and communications aides

"Power has gravitated to the White House over the past 50 years, and it keeps going," said Bradley H. Patterson Jr., who served in three administrations and has written two books on the subject. "I would say development of all major issues important to the president are centered in the White House."

Gee, the man who was elected oversees development of all major issues important to him. And the surprise is where?

U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 1: The executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States of America.

The Big Trunk blogged The Washington Post article of the day is further to Deacon's point last night about the new media image of President Bush as an executive asserting too much control over the officials charged with implementing administration policy: "Bush is keeping cabinet secretaries close to home." What ever happened to Bush the pawn?

Orrin Judd blogged He's been president for 4+ years and they still haven't figured out that he runs the administration on a business model?