ns continues to expand beyond any rational calculation of genuine need. Even as federal civilian employment has shrunk by more than a quarter of a million since President Clinton came to office, no concomitant shrinkage has occurred in the ranks of noncareer appointees. By accumulation, rather than careful design, the number of management layers in government has steadily grown. So, too, has the number of presidential appointees. There are forty-three times more appointees in the federal government today than there were in 1935, five times as many as in 1960. There are so many, in fact, that vacancy rates normally run between a quarter and a third. Obstacle Course called for a one-third cut in the number of appointees. Current practice suggests they would not be missed. The appointment process in 1997 has seen the full flowering of a number of trends that had sprouted in the previous decade. What has long been called the presidential appointment process is often not that now. The formal role of the president remains the same, but power has steadily accreted to the Senate, and even to individual senators. When a senator can say of a nominee, "he’s not my kind of nominee," and then decline even to permit a committee review of the president’s choice, how can anyone accurately call this the presidential appointment process? And when presidents acquiesce to this development, how can one expect anything other than its acceleration? In a Senate-driven appointment process, standards, as they are called, have been raised to an all-time high. The bar to entry has been steadily ratcheted upward. It is hard to imagine much more that can be done to make public service--or rather entry into public service--less attractive to talented citizens. "Something like a prolonged root canal without anesthesia," former director of central intelligence Robert M. Gates called his passage through the process. A great many Americans, of sorts who in pr...
