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The Invisible Bush CabinetWhy no one knows who the commerce secretary is.

By Timothy Noah and Avi Zenilman
Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 6:53 PM ET

Quick: Who is the secretary of housing and urban development? Too hard? All right, then. Who's the secretary of labor? How about the secretary of energy? Or the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy? He isn't a member of Bush's Cabinet, but he enjoys Cabinet rank. Not even Chatterbox, who is paid to know these things, could have told you the drug czar's name without looking it up. (For a complete cheat sheet, click here.)

As presidencies near their end, it's not uncommon for dynamic Cabinet secretaries to be replaced by bland seat-warmers. The forgettable quality to these appointments is nicely illustrated by Slate's recent need to explain to readers why White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card is addressed as "Secretary Card." (Answer: He was George H.W. Bush's transportation secretary during the waning months of his presidency.) But Dubya's presidency isn't nearing its end. Nearly half his current term remains, and there's a fair chance he'll be granted a second one. Moreover, with the sole exception of Treasury Secretary John Snow, every member of the current Bush Cabinet has been present since the start of Bush's presidency. This is the Original Broadway Cast, not some touring company. Why do so few people know who these people are?

Chatterbox thinks the Bush Cabinet's obscurity is well-deserved—not because the individual members lack personal dynamism (we haven't seen enough of them to know!), but because they have done so little to warrant anybody's attention. The Bush administration fights wars and it cuts taxes. (That's why everyone knows who Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld are, and it's why many people know who Snow is, even though he's been in the saddle less than six months.) But the Bushies do precious little else. The only Bush domestic initiatives that have a chance of being remembered are Bush's decision to restrict stem-cell research and his "no child left behind" education bill. Oh, sure, he's saddled budget-strapped states with new responsibilities while reducing federal aid, leaving less money for things like medical care for the poor. And he's brought back the budget deficit in a big way. But these actions are the result of laziness and indifference, not malice. As such, they really can't be called policy. Can you name one thing Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman has done during the past two years? Neither can Chatterbox.

To plumb the shallows of the Bush Cabinet's fame, Slate intern Avi Zenilman last week stood for an hour in front of the Commerce Department building asking passers-by if they could identify the secretary of commerce. Out of 38 who consented to answer him, only seven could state that it was Don Evans. Six of these seven were Commerce Department employees. A park service ranger and two security guards newly assigned to Commerce were among those who could not name the commerce secretary. "I'm new here," one of the security guards explained. "I know him when I see him." A nearby T-shirt vendor said, "The Secretary? Charlie? Tall black guy, right?" (Don Evans is white.)

This was not Main Street, U.S.A. It was Washington, D.C., where cab drivers read the Federal Register. These people couldn't name Don Evans not because they were ignorant, but because Evans had given them no reason to know his name. The same applies to most of the rest of Bush's Cabinet.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate. Avi Zenilman is a former Slate intern.
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Remarks from the Fray:

It's tough to remember any cabinet member who didn't preside over some large program change or wasn't involved in some controversy. Spence Abraham (energy) loses out because the press and the dems have connected energy policy directly to Dick Cheney; it would actually be good to get him some serious TV time - he's a good guy, and it can't hurt to remind people that the US has an arab-american Cabinet official. Tommy Thompson (HUD) loses out because he's not using HUD to prep for a possible senate campaign, like some Cuomos we could name. Labor, Commerce, and Treasury lose out because Bush doesn't have an economic policy beyond cutting taxes. Christi Whitman loses out because although Bush is apparently doing quite a bit for the environment, it's not news. The Bush team should get her in front of the cameras too.

--J_Mann

(To reply, click here)


Here's the problem with this "invisible cabinet" concept: too many people are concerned about the government DOING something. When the government IS doing something, that usually means they're figuring out yet another way to reshuffle money out of one pocket and into another, and spending money of stuff that really shouldn't be the government's job anyway. I'm convinced that when the government wanders outside the basics of protecting our rights and our borders, it doesn't really DO anything. Mainly it restricts. It can't create jobs, make poor people rich or any of a number of things a lot of people THINK it can do. So, to the original point, who CARES is if the secretary of the interior is more or less invisible? The less these people do, the better, for the most part. The author of this article seems concerned that not enough money and taxes are being collected, redirected and shuffled. And somehow cutting taxes and winning a war are not significant. Cutting taxes actually WILL create jobs, much more so than an "active" government agency can.

--DaveDufour

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Mr. Noah's comments remind me of "Silent" Sam Pierce, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Ronald Reagan. Scandalphiles will remember Sam Pierce as the S/HUD when some of his senior staff were Dancing With Dollars with HUD contractors. Mr. Pierce earned the sobriquet "Silent" because of his almost uncanny ability to "See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil."…

--Yakuza

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