SCIENCE LAB: "Who Manages Best? Research shows that career bureaucrats trump political appointees in government jobs," by Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 1-7 December 2008.

There is the assumption that it's the political appointees who run things or change things or are the real power players in DC. My experience has always been that the real power in DC is the persistent class of senior bureaucrats just below the political level. The appointees typically last about 12-to-18 months, getting up to speed for most of that period and--maybe--having some actual impact if they're quite focused in their goals. Otherwise they come and go, leaving nary a trace. They may think they run things and we may hold them ultimately responsible, but the truth is they're more powerless than powerful.

The reality is not the change factor associated with new appointees in an active sense but more in a passive sense: it's not what leadership they bring but what leadership-from-below that they allow.

This article cites two schools of thought on appointees:

One . . . argues that lots of political appointees can sweep away bureaucratic cobwebs. The other suggests that appointees mostly get in the way of the career professionals who really know how to make government work.

My experience definitely tends to the latter view. I mean, there's just no comparing the knowledge base and wisdom.

New study from the University of Wisconsin (my alma mater) says that appointees' biggest impact tends to be negative--as in, they're more likely to damage the president's agenda than to help it, because they're ideologues or scandal-creators or too "loyal" for their own good.

Another one from Vanderbilt does direct comparisons of 600 federal programs run by career bureaucrats and political appointees. On paper, the appointees have better educational and career credentials, but when it comes to performance, "programs administered by civil servants were significantly more likely to display better strategic planning, program design, financial oversight--and results."

The key analytic judgment:

For all the hatred that political candidates aim at the Washington bureaucracy during campaigns, political interference rather than bureaucratic inertia appears to be the central driver of governmental incompetence.

This is why, when people ask me, "Have you gotten to [some political appointee]?" I tell them that the real goal is to network with the career bureaucrats just below and around that appointee. That's why I love briefing SESers (senior executive service) and top-line general service players in government conferences. Give me a room of 500 of these players, and you've got a serious quorum of influencers.