Cabinet
- Created by: DaisyR13
- Created on: 12-06-14 13:37
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- Cabinet
- Not mentioned in the Constitution
- Grown up by tradition and necessity
- Membership/ recruitment
- No coherent shadow cabinet waiting to take office (as in UK)
- Serving Congressmen may be reluctant to give up their seats
- Prestige and job security in the cabinet is rare
- 2008 Congressman Jim Clyburn (NC) turned down Obama's invite to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Confirmability needed, have to be acceptable to the Senate so more likely to be moderate
- Rare for Senate to reject - 1989 John Tower, Bush's nominee for SecDef
- Need for balance, restraint of President's cjoices
- Age, political ideology etc.
- Policy specialist is usually the president's main consideration
- Some individual cabinet officers are very important (State, Treasury) but as a group fairly unimportant
- Proximity/ frequency of meetings
- Distant, SecState's office is in Foggy Bottom (10 mins from Oval Office) SecDef is in Prentagon (15-20 mins)
- Frequency depends on the president
- GW Bush "once every couple of months"
- Reagan in 1st year 36, 2nd year 21, 3rd and 4th 12
- On average 3 times a year with Obama and the whole cabinet, SecDef 20 times a year and SecState 16 times a year
- Loyalty
- Going native is when a cabinet member tends to be ensnared by their department's way of thinking
- Loyalty to Congress as Congress' votes decide their departmental budgets, committees can call them to account in person
- Roles/ aims
- Advice giving at the president's discretion, no obligation to listen to them
- Public demonstration of type of presidency
- Clinton's would "look like America"
- JFK's "Camelot" "round table" of the brightest young minds in America
- Policy specialists
- Not rivals to the president, Cabinet is rarely a stepping stone to the presidency
- Not mentioned in the Constitution
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