Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Source Description
This file contains:
The Presidency and Policy Formulation: The Johnson Task Forces. By Norman C. Thomas, University of Michigan and Harold L. Wolman, University of Pennsylvania. 39 pages. [Report], n.d.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
26127068
label
WHSF: Returned, 39-3
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
26127068
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
WHSF: Returned, 39-3
description
This file contains:
The Presidency and Policy Formulation: The Johnson Task Forces. By Norman C. Thomas, University of Michigan and Harold L. Wolman, University of Pennsylvania. 39 pages. [Report], n.d.
citationUrl
collections
Richard M. Nixon's Returned Materials Collection
Returned White House Special Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
26127068
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
e5d958c79db1b034
ocrText
Richard Nixon Presidential Library
White House Special Files Collection
Folder List
Box Number Folder Number Document Date Document Type
Document Description
39
3
n.d.
Report
The Presidency and Policy Formulation: The
Johnson Task Forces. By Norman C.
Thomas, University of Michigan and Harold
L. Wolman, University of Pennsylvania. 39
pages.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Page 1 of 1
Pls Plarettern
Haldeman
1
THE PRESIDENCY AND POLICY FORMULATION:
THE JOHNSON TASK FORCES*
by
Norman C. Thomas
University of Michigan
and
Harold L. Wolman
?
University of Pennsylvania
*We wish to acknowledge financial support received during the
conduct of research for this paper from the Relm Foundation,
the National Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation and the
Institute of Publio Administration of The University of Michigan
THE PRESIDENCY AND POLICY formulation:
THE JOHNSON TASK FORCES
Every modern President since Franklin D. Roosevelt has made
important contributions to the Presidency and Lyndon B. Johnson
is no exception. The purpose of this paper is to examine a set
of significant changes which occured in the process of formulating
presidential legislative programs in domestic policy areas singled
out by President Johnson for special emphasis and attention. While
not revolutionary, the changes constitute a substantial departure
from past practices. They involve the extensive use of White House
task forces as a formal means of policy formulation. We will analyze
the nature of these changes and some of their consequences for
national domestic policy-making, focusing on the policy areas of
education and housing. We have based our findings on data obtained
through interviews with participants in the policy process in those
1
areas.
The Pre-Johnson Pattern
Almost every student of American government is familiar
with the pre-Johnson pattern of presidential policy formulation
and especially with the development of the President's legisla-
tive program. This pattern normally involved the formulation of
the legislative program almost exclusively on the basis of proposals
developed by the departments and agencies and submitted to the
President through the Bureau of the Budget. 2 The Bureau and the
White House staff then analyzed these proposals and from their
analysis the legislative program emerged. The departments and
-2-
3
agencies carried most of the burden of policy innovation.
Presumably the experience and expertise which they possessed
in their special areas along with a steady input from their clientele
groups would insure an adequate flow of now ideas. Although a few
scholars have expressed uneasiness about the dependence of the Presi-
dent, the White House staff and the Bureau of the Budget on the
agencies for ideas and information, 4. most political scientists have
paid little attention to the operational consequences of this pat-
tern. Some participants in the policy process within the Executive
Office of the President have contended, however, that this tradi-
tional pattern has resulted in the adulteration of new ideas by
internal bureaucratic considerations and clientele pressures ex-
crted through the agencies. The result they argue, has been a
tendency to repeat proposals until they eventually are adopted
or until the rationale for them has long disappeared. This they
have concluded, has meant a dearth of imagination in agency-oriented
proposals which tend to be remedial and incremental rather than
broadly innovative. As Phillip S. Hughes of the Bureau of the
Budget summarized this point of view:
The routine way to develop 8 legislative program has
been to ask the departments to generate proposals. Each
agency sends its ideas through channels, which means
that the ideas are limited by the imagination of the
old-line agencies. They tend to be repetitive--the
same proposals year after year. When the ideas of the
different agencies reach the departmental level, all
kinds of objections are raised, especially objections
that new notions may somehow infringe on the rights of
some other agency in the department. By the time a
legislative propesal Trom a department reaches the
President. its a pretty well-compromised product. 5
-3-
A partial departure from the pattern of dependence on the
bureaucracy for new legislative proposals occured in the Kennedy
to
Administration. Upon returning his. party all office after eight
years of Republican rule, President Kennedy moved quickly to
establish a legislative program. By the time he was inaugurated,
Kennedy had commissioned 29 task forces in various areas of foreign
and domestic policy and 24 of them had reported back to him. 6
The
task force reports served to collate for the new Administration
some of the nation's best thinking on the critical problems con-
also
fronting it. Theysaided the new President in formulating his
program. Subsequent publication of the reports enabled them to
provide a ready reference for policy proposals for individuals
and groups inside and outside of the government. While most of
Kennedy's legislative proposals were scaled down from the broad
scope of the task force recommendations, the thrust and direction
of the reports survived.
Although the pre-inaugural task forces were an important in-
novation, they were not to be repeated. Kennedy did experiment
with other variations of the task force, however. The pre-inaugural
task forces composed largely of outside experts gave way to intra-
governmental groups which Kennedy used to deal with foreign policy
crises and domestic problems on an ad hoc basis.
The Johnson Pattern
Soon after President Johnson assumed office, he faced the
necessity of developing a legislative program which could be
identified as "his own." There apparently was a feeling within
when
the White House and in the Bureau of the Budget which the Presi-
dent adopted, that such a program was not likely to be developed
on the basis of proposals submitted by the departments and agencies.
The need to obtain outside advice and suggestions was especially
critical in an Administration where most key personnel and the
basic values and goals remained unchanged from those of its
predecessor.
Early in 1964. a number of President Johnson's close ad-
visers including Budget Director Kermit Gordon, presidential
assistants Bill Moyers and Richard Goodwin and Chairman Walter
Heller of the Council of Economic Advisers, all of whom were
familiar with the pre-inaugural Kennedy task forces, sug-
gested that the President commission a series of task forces
to study specific policy areas. In order to avoid the pitfalls
encountered in the Kennedy task force operation, e.g., charges
of overrepresentation of intellectuals in their membership and
of a consequent lack of realism in their proposals which forced
the Administration to defend their reports even before they had
become the basis for action, the Johnson task forces operated
under a cloak of secrecy. The members agreed not to reveal
their assignments to the press or to professional associates
and not to disclose the substance of their deliberations or
7
reports. The Administration promised to reciprocate.
The 1964 experience with task force operations was deemed
successful and was refined and developed in the following years.
-5-
Under the direction of Special Assistant Joseph A. Califano,
the White House staff assumed the paramount role in setting
the framework for legislative and administrative policy-making.
As we have observed, policy planning prior to the Johnson Ad-
ministration was primarily a function of the departments and
agencies with review by the White House staff and the Bureau of
the Budget. President Johnson brought that function more ef-
fectively under his control through the integration of the
task force operation with legislative submissions and budget
review and the creation of a small policy-planning staff under
one of his key assistants. 8 The impact of the departments and
agencies in the development of the presidential legislative
program may still have been considerable, but it tended to
come more through the participation of their policy-level
personnel in White House meetings where task force reports.
were evaluated. A high-ranking official in the United States
Office of Education (USOE) acknowledged that in the past few
years "much policy development in education has moved from
here to the White House." Similarly, a career official in
the Bureau of the Budget observed that "at the stage of de-
veloping the presidential legislative program, the task force
reports play a more significant role than any documents or
proposals emanating from the agencies."
The agencies proposed a substantial amount of technical
legislation which corrected defects and filled gaps in existing
mSm
statutes but many of the most important substantive contributions
came from elsewhere. "The task forces presented us with meaty
propositions to which we could react," recalled a former Bud-
get Bureau official, "not the nuts and bolts stuff which we
usually got from the agencies." The agencies also made major
contributions to public policy in the course of drafting bills
and implementing programs, but their participation in the for-
mulative stages was somewhat reduced during the Johnson Ad-
ministration
9
Perhaps the distinction which should be made
is that task forces and key presidential advisers operated at
a much more general level than all but a few top-ranking agency
personnel. Department and agency personnel took what were often
vague task force ideas and fashioned specific legislative proposals
from them. As an HEW official explained, "we had to come up with
the conception of the idea in legislation, not task foroe rhetoric."
The processes of policy formulation in the Executive Office
of the President varied widely in the period from 1964 through
1968, but a general pattern appears to have emerged in the cycle
of the task force operation as it developed under Califano and his
10
staff.
Each year in late spring. Califano and his assistants
visited a number of major university centers throughout the
country in order to glean ideas for new programs. At the same
-7-
time, the White House canvassed the Administration for new 1deas.
Various officials who were regarded as "idea men" were invited
to submit proposals on any subject directly to the White House.
This permitted them to by-pass normal bureaucratic channels and
departmental and agency hierarchies. For example, according to
a White House staff member, former Secretary of Defense McNamara
submitted over 50 proposals on various domestic problems in one
year.
After receiving them, Califano's assistants prepared
written one-page descriptions of all the ideas. These "write-
ups" included a "proposal" section which briefly explained the
idea, a description of the problem and its relationship to
on-going programs and a recommendation for action. Next, these
papers were categorized and a high-level group within the in-
stitutionalized Presidency reviewed them. This group also re-
viewed the reports of previous task forces, presidential com-
missions and other advisory bodies which were filed during
the course of the previous year. In 1967 this group included
Califano, Budget Director Charles Schultze, his deputy Phillip
S. Hughes, Chairman Gardner Ackley of the Council of Economic
Advisers, Special Counsel to the President Harry McPherson and
Califano's staff. Following the review, Califano and his
assistants compiled a loose leaf book in which the remaining
ideas were grouped by substantive policy areas. The screening
-8-
group then reconvened for a second examination after which it
sent the book to the President with a cover letter indicating
the areas which it felt required further study. The President
and Califano then reviewed the proposals deciding either to
abandon them, study them further or mark them for additional
study if time and staff were available.
Further development of the ideas which were not abandoned
occured through referral to individual consultants or formal
advisory councils, study by departments and agencies, or examin-
ation by task forces. Reports of individual consultants are not
often made public and their impact is difficult to assess. Ad-
visory council reports usually are public documents. Their
influence appears to vary with the reputations of their members,
the quality of their content, and the current political sig-
nificance of the subject matter. Agency studies also vary
greatly in impact, but generally they can be regarded as con-
tributing to internal bureaucratic thinking and policy develop-
ment.
The assignment of a task force to examine an idea or a set
of related ideas signified that the President and his top ad-
visors regarded the problem as one of considerable significance.
Although task forces did not routinely operate in all of the
Great Society areas, they did function fairly frequently. In
1967 a total of 50 separate task forces were operating in various
domestic policy areas. Task force assignments, which varied in
-9-
scope and purpose, determined whether their members would be
drawn from people outside or inside the government or from both
groups.
Outside task forces were the primary means of securing new
ideas for the development of policy. According to participants
on various task forces in education and housing, they received
broad directives which accorded them maximum freedom to come
forth with ideas. "The President," observed a high-ranking
presidential staff member, wants their judgment on substance--
not political feasibility."
There was some adjustment in the functions of outside
task forces after 1964. In the words of one participant, the
1964 task forces were "happenings." President Johnson used the
1964 task forces as ad hoc devices to develop proposals which
almost immediately became part of his legislative program. By
1966 the task forces were a normal and rather elaborate aspect
of the operations of the Presidency. The President began to use
them to take a long-range view of major policy areas and problems
some
as well as to develop/immediate legislative proposals. He and
his staff took steps to institutionalize the task force opera-
tion by integrating it with the highly structured and formal
budget review process.
As compared to outside task forces, inside, or interagency
task forces functioned more to coordinate agency approaches and
to obtain some measure of interagency agreement in areas of
dispute. Inside task forces also provided agencies with a
-10-
review
vehicle for a broad / of the reports of outside task forces.
While interagency groups may have generated some new proposals,
their major purpose was to provide the President with a. coordinated
overview of functional problems that cut across departmental and
agency lines and to suggest alternative solutions to them. An
important aspect of this coordinating function of the interagency
task forces was to conduct a "detailed pricing out of all proposals."
Members of inside task forces usually included representatives of
the Bureau of the Budget and Califano's staff and agency heads or
departmental assistant secretaries.
Task forces did not displace that older and more familiar
advisory mechanism, the public study commission, some of which are
actually authorized by Congress (e.g., the Douglas Commission in
housing). President Johnson employed a number of public com-
missions including the Kaiser Committee, the Heineman Commission
on income maintenance, the Crime Commission, and the Kerner Com-
mission. Public commissions can, as cynics have suggested,
give the illusion that something is being done to attack a problem.
Establishing a commission is a. safe response--it is action yet
at the same time it disturbs none of the very real political
11
opposition which would emerge if substantive action were attempted.
The impact of the report of a public commission is likely to be
through its educational effect on public opinion rather than
through direct translation into the Administration's policy pro-
posals. Occasionally when the President has complete confidence
in the commission chairman and stays in close contact with him,
-11-
the report may have a direct impact on Administration policy.
This was the case with the Kaiser Committee (President's Committee
on Urban Housing) in 1967-1968.
Public commissions can also function to develop support
for the Administration. By establishing representative groups
and then exposing their deliberations and their reports to public
attention, it is possible to develop support for the recommendations.
The consensus-building functions of public commissions are no doubt
advantageous, but the problem associated with their use is that
reports and recommendations which are at all innovative tend to
12
be "controversial" and hence an embarrassment to the White House.
The noncommital response of President Johnson to the report of the
Kerner Commission (President's Commission on Civil Disorders) in
March, 1968 and the open criticism of the report by Vice Presi-
dent Humphrey and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Cohen
illustrate the risks involved in creating public commissions--they
may file reports and make recommendations which place the Adminis-
tration in a. less than favorable light. Nor are public commissions
likely to serve as sources of information or new ideas. According
to one of our respondents, "the basic ideas in the Kerner report
came to us at least two years ago in various task force reports."
Furthermore, most task force reports are likely to undergo more
intensive scrutiny than that accorded the reports of public com-
missions.
Once the task forces had written their reports, they submitted
them to the President and deposited them with the Bureau of the
-12-
13
Budget. Usually, outside task forces reported during the fall.
The Bureau of the Budget and the relevant departments and agencies
(if the latter were consulted as they frequently but not always
were) forwarded their comments directly to the White House.
Following the initial evaluation, the White House staff,
under Califano's direction. took the lead in winnowing down
task force proposals. (If, in the case of an outside task force
report, it appeared that an interagency task force should be
created, that decision was made by Califano, the Budget Director.
the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the appro-
priate department and agency heads). In a series of White House
meetings, department and agency heads and their top assistants,
representatives of the Bureau of the Budget's examining divisions
and of the Council of Economic Advisers and members of Califano's
staff examined all task force reports,
The purpose of
these meetings was to secure agreement on major areas of concern
and proposed courses of action. The participants received con-
tinuous direction from the President as to his priorities.
After much discussion and bargaining, they developed a proposed
legislative program which was presented to the President who
then made
final decisions on it.
The process of developing presidential legislative programs
in domestic policy areas established under the Johnson Administra-
tion occured in a more or less orderly temporal sequence. (See
Figure 1). It can best be described as an irregular but definite
pattern which was fairly well systematized.
-13-
Figure 1
Sequence of Events in Preparing the Legislative Program:
The Johnson Administration
Idea Gathering:
Internal
Appoint-
Receipt and
White
Prepar-
Visits to uni-
discus-
ment of
review of
House
ation of
versities; con-
sions of
outside
task force
meetings
messages
tacts with out-
ideas
task
reports
side experts
gathered
forces
Final
Introduc-
and "idea men"
Agency
Presi-
tion of
in government
submis-
dential
bills
sions
decisions
on the
program
April/May/June
July
August
Sept/Oct/Nov
December
Jan/Feb/Mar
Task Force Operations
In order to provide a more detailed picture of the task force
operation, we have analyzed some of those which have operated in
the areas of education and housing. We have been able to examine
carefully certain aspects of the task forces including the selec-
tion of members, the methods of operation. staffing and the evalu-
ation of task force reports. We studied the major task forces
and public commissions in housing and education from 1964 through
mid-1968. These included:
In education;
1964 Gardner* Task Force
1966 Early Childhood Task Force
1967 Friday Task Force
1967 Interagency Task Force
*By popular convention, outside task forces and public commis-
sions are usually refered to by the name of the chairman.
-14-
And, in housing;
1964 Wood Task Force
1965 Wood Task Force
1.966 Vlvisaker Task Force
1967 Interagency Task Force
1967-68 Kaiser Committee
Membership Selection.
The President and his top policy advisers usually selected
the members of outside task forces. The selection process
operated quite informally. The White House staff, the Bureau
of the Budget, the Council of Economic Advisers in the case of
housing. and the Office of Science and Technology in the case OF
education, and in some cases the concerned department or agency,
suggested prospective members. The White House staff, principally
Califano and his assistants, took the lead in screening the initial
nominations. Then the President approved the final choices, some-
times adding names and perhaps deleting others. In 1965. for
example, President Johnson added the names of Senator Abraham
Ribicoff and Edgar Kaiser to the Wood task force. The acceptance
rate for invitations to serve was high, especially among academics.
According to one White House staff member, "only three OF four out
of some 250 /academics/ have refused to serve. In reality, aca-
demics are anxious to be able to report privately to the Presi-
dent their views in critical policy areas and to do so with no
holds barred."
The criteria employed in selecting members of outside task
forces tended to vary with the mission of the task force. Many
of our respondents emphasized the importance of independence of
-15-
viewpoint. In language resembling that which Neustadt uses in
Presidential Power, 14 a White House staff member commented that
"the President has to have advice from someone who knows the
right answers and who has no political axe to grind." On the
other hand, persons known to hold supposedly "radical" points
of view were not likely to be included. A participant in the
selection of members for some of the housing task forces recalled
that "the names were selected on the basis of a kind of common
sense soundness. We would not have picked a Michael Harrington,
for example. We looked for people who had written w1th perspec-
tive and reasonable freshness and who haven't been in the Govern-
ment for several years."
The membership of outside task forces was not as carefully
(See Table 1)
15
balanced as that of public commissions tends to be.
/
However,
since task forces contributed to policy formulation and the Presi-
dent wanted politically saleable policies, their representative-
ness became a factor in selecting members, espcially when the
objective was to survey a policy area and come up quickly
with new legislative proposals. If a task force report was
unanimous, a supporting coalition representing most of the major
elements in American society would already have been constructed.
Thus, the housing task forces in 1964 and 1965 were more or less
representative of interests in that area. Also, some of the tradi-
tional clientele groups in the education "establishment", the Council
of Chief State School Officers and the American Association of School
Administrators, were represented on the 1964 and 1967 task forces.
However, that representation was more apparent than real since the
task force members belonging to those groups tended to be quite 132-
dependent of the "establishment."
-16-
Table 1
Representation on Outside Task Forces
Education
State and
College
College
Business
Foundation
Other
Local
Adminis-
Profes-
Officials
Officials
trators
sors
1964
3
3
2
2
2
1
1967
2
6
3
0
1
1
Housing
State and
College
Business
Labor
Civil
Interest
Other
Local
Adminis-
Rights
Groups in
Officials
trators &
Groups
Housing
Professors
1964
1
6
0
0
0
1
3
1965
2
2
1
1
1
0
2
1967
2
5
0
1
1
0
1
1967*
1
1
10
3
1
2
0
*Kaiser Committee
Not infrequently Federal officials served on an outside
task force. In 1964 the Commissioner of Education, Francis
Keppel, was an ex officio member of the Gardner task force and
in 1965 Budget Director Kermit Gordon and Senator Ribicoff served
on the housing task force. In 1967, Secretary Gardner, Commissioner
Howe and a few other HEW officials sat with the Friday task force on
a number of occasions. Perhaps what is most striking about the
outside task force is the extent to which academically based per-
sons were overrepresented in their memberships. This is particularly
apparent when the housing task forces are compared with the Kaiser
Committee.
-17-
In selecting members of outside task forces a conscious
attempt was made to avoid overrepresentation of traditional
clientele groups such as the National Association of Housing and
Redevelopment Officials, the National Education Association and
the American Council on Education. These groups had traditionally
worked with and through the departments and agencies in formulating
and developing policy. Once the agency role in initiating policy
began to decline as a consequence of the task force operation,
the access of the clientele groups to the central policy-makers
also began to fall. These groups responded to their loss of ef-
fective access by criticizing the task forces:
The task forces represent the worst form of
intellectual and educational elitism. They are
based on the implicit assumption that the edu-
cation associations are incapable of any sort
of creative or innovative thought.
A representative of a higher
education association.
The education task forces included non-loyalist repre-
sentatives of the so-called "establishment" such as a chief state
but
school officer and a big-city school superintendent, /they were
weighted in favor of academicians. Given their fundamental pur-
pose, to generate new ideas, this was not surprising. Education
is a policy area in which there is wide agreement that serious
problems exist, but great uncertainty and disagreement over ap-
propriate solutions to them. In housing, however, task forces
-18-
tended to be more representative of the various interests involved.
Unlike education, housing is an area in which the number of
possible solutions is limited and disagreements are usually
over matters of technique rather than fundamental differences
of philosophy.
Representative task forces and particularly the public com-
missions also have the added benefit, for the Administration,
of co-opting relatively powerful but essentially conservative
elements of society for social problem-solving. As a key presi-
dential adviser volunteered:
We try to bring some of these elements in to, in
effect, co-opt them. We rub their noses in the problem
and bring them along with the solutions. Hell, some
of them have never seen slums before. We take them
to the ghettos and they are amazed that such things
can exist. It's surprising how radical some of them
become.
Procedures and Staffing.
The operating procedures of the outside task forces in educa-
tion and housing followed a similar pattern. Generally, the task
16
forces commenced with from one to three meetings
at which the
members, in the course of reacting to one or two broad position
papers, ranged over the entire subject. During the opening ses-
sions, the task forces identified areas for future study and
commissioned additional position papers. The significance of
the papers is that they provided the basis for initial dis-
cussions at task force sessions. After a few more meetings,
either the staff or a task force member, usually the chairman,
-19-
prepared tentative drafts of various sections of the task force
reports. Further discussions focused on these drafts and the
task forces began to move toward a consensus regarding their
recommendations and reports.
The task forces do not appear to have used formal votes to
reach their decisions, but rather the mode of decision was to
bargain back and forth until they reached agreement. When mem-
bers raised strong objections, efforts were made to satisfy them.
According to one participant, the prevailing decisional norm
established was one of acquiescence "if the rest of you agree,
then I won't make a fuss." In some cases, however, dissident
members refused to yield as when Whitney Young of the Urban
League opposed shifting community action programs from the
Office of Economic Opportunity to HUD in 1965, because the
HW
Negro community was suspicious of HUD. As this example
suggests, the members do represent their institutional affiliations
during task force or commission deliberations. Indeed, a staff
member of one task force commented, "The members not only ac-
tually do speak in terms of the interests of that sector of
society from which they are appointed, but in many cases, they
perceive their role on the task force as doing exactly that."
The secrecy of the task force operation was perhaps one
of its most manifest characteristics. One task force staff
member told us:
Our task force was a C.I.A.-type operation. I
felt very odd about it. We were not sure about what
should be said and what shouldn't be said. There
-20-
was no name on our door for the task force. The
task force staff director simply had his own name
on the door. Papers were put. under lock and key
every evening.
These remarks were not atypical of comments made by people who
were intimately involved in the task force operation. In the
eyes of the President and his staff secrecy was the raison d'etre
for the task force operation. Without secrecy, they felt, the
task forces would merely have become a series of public com-
missions and study groups and have been subject to the problems
17
associated with that form of advisory organization.
Secrecy
also meant that precise representational balancing of task
force membership was not required. The President could appoint
members to maximize the range of available experts rather than
to balance interests. Or, he would "stack" the membership so as to
produce a predetermined result. Secrecy also enabled the President
to ignore those task force reports which did not fall within
the limits of what he considered possible to accomplish. Recom-
mendations could be adopted OF rejected without having to ex-
pend energy and political resources defending the choices that
were made. The range of options was not only maximized, it was
kept open for a longer period of time and at very little political
cost. Thus, the secrecy of the reports prevented opposition from
developing to task force proposals until a much later stage in the
policy process.
Perhaps the principal differences between task forces in
their operations lie in the roles played by their staffs. We
--2].-
found almost unanimous agreement that a competent staff is
essential to a successful task force operation. Generally they
were staffed with personnel from the Executive Office of the
President, from various agencies, or from outside government.
The Bureau of the Budget had primary responsibility for staffing
the 1964 housing and the three education task forces. The edu-
cation task forces also had staff assistance from the Office of
Science and Technology, the National Science Foundation, the
Office of Education. the Office of Economic Opportunity and
the National Institutes of Health. Usually the executive
director of the task force devoted full time to staff work and
other individuals were "borrowed" on a part-time basis. The
executive directors of the education task forces and the first
housing task force were Budget Bureau officials. They assumed
responsibility for recruiting other staff members who came from
within the Executive Office and the agencies.
Starting in 1965. housing task forces operated with pro-
fessional staffs more responsible to the White House. The ex-
clusion of the Budget Bureau from a major staffing role in this
area was apparently B. consequence of the feeling in the White
House that financial conservatism on the part of the staff of
the 1964 task force was responsible for an overly cautious and
somewhat unimaginative report. In contrast, the Budget Bureau
officials who served as staff directors for education task
forces tended to prod them to be more venturesome and innova-
tive than they might have been otherwise.
-22-
The White House assigned a staff member to act as liaison
to every task force. This liaison man played a major role if
legislative proposals were expected from the task force. This
occured when Richard Goodwin sat with the 1964 education task
force and in 1965 when Harry McPherson was a vigorous participant
in the deliberations of the Wood task force. The function of
the liaison man with subsequent task forces, however. was mainly
to represent the task force to the President and to convey his
wishes to it through Special Assistant Califano. The Bureau of
the Budget also maintained liaison with the task forces, pri-
marily to keep them advised of the existence and nature ofon-
going Federal programs. When a Budget Bureau official served
as a staff director, he automatically provided this liaison.
Moreover, Budget Bureau liaison men assumed an important role
in the operations of outside task forces. This occured in 1967
when the task forces were asked to make projections at alterna-
tive budgetary levels, thus assigning priorities to their
proposals.
The departments and agencies, HUD and its predecessor the
Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA) and HEW and USOE played
an ambiguous role in the operations of outside task forces.
Since the manifest intent of outside task forces was to bypass
the departments and agencies as major instruments of policy
formulation, their officials tended to distrust task forces
and to denigrate their significance. Thus, a HUD official
disdainfully observed, "I think the task forces have done an
-23-
editing job that hasn't been done elsowhere and little more,"
while an H&W exceutive remarked that "the reports are kept so
secret that they don't really pollinate anything."
In 1964. RHFA through Morton Schussheim was actively involved
in the work of the outside task force, In spite of this liaison,
however. the agency reacted negatively to many portions of the
task force report. Apparently this was not appreciated at the
White House, for afterward the agency was almost completely ex-
cluded from the activities of outside task forces. By mid-1966
outside task forces in housing operated within the framework of
the Executive Office, but beyond the scope of direct bureaucratic
influence. In interagency task forces, however, the department
was likely to dominate the proceedings. One participant in the
work of the 1967 housing interagency task force remarked, "inter-
agency task forces often reflect the lead agency's legislative
program. Last fall HUD did all the staff work and [Secretary]
Weaver chaired. The report would have been about the same had it
simply come out of HUD without the participation of other agencies."
In education, the situation was somewhat different. Francis
Keppel participated actively in the Gardner task force which largely
approved his ideas and he supported its recommendations. Since he
was the head of the agency, no one down the line in the U.S. Office
of Education could officially react negatively to the report. There
were some USOE officials, however, who informally opposed the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the main recommenda-
tions of the task force. This apparently is what caused a former
Budget Bureau official to remark that "the old-line OE bureaucrats
treed to sabotage the Gardner Task Force report." HEW and USOE
officials continued, however, to sit with subsequent task forces and
1967 interagency
Commissioner Howe was the key figure in the work of the/task force.
Evaluation of Reports.
-24-
the ovaluation of the reports of outside took forces VIDAD a
flexible and somewhat unstructured process. After being sent to
the Deceddent and deposited with the Budget Bureau's Office of
Legislative Reference, the reports went to the Bureau's examining
divisions, other units in the Executive Office and the agencies
for comment. The role of the agencies in evaluation was minor.
however, when compared with that of the Bureau of the Budget
and the White House staff. Significantly, the same personnel
from the Bureau and the White House who served on task force
staffs and sat with them as liaison men were usually involved
in evaluating the reports. One Budget Bureau official recalled
that while "I leaned overbackward to be fair, I did feel like
I was meeting myself coming back."
This dual role of the Bureau of the Budget and the White
House staff produced a measure of governmental, but non-agency,
input to the task forces. It meant that their reports had an
Executive Office bias which was not openly acknowledged. One
departmental official charged that "there is an incestuous re-
lationship between the task forces on the one hand and the
Budget Bureau and the White House on the other." (Presumably
the reports are the offspring of the incestuous unions!) The
Bureau was aware of the duality of its role and the problems
inherent in it. As one of its officials said, "we are involved
at the Bureau with task forces as participants and as critics.
We have to be a force for sifting out the most workable pro-
posals." But the dual role was perplexing and frustrating for
those outside the decisional process in the Executive Office
who were affected by its actions.
The extent of the evaluation accorded the reports depended,
at least in part, on the closeness with which the White House
-25-
and the Bureau of the Budget followed the proceedings of the
task force and the confidence which the Provident had in 100
members. The report of the 1965 Wood task force, for example,
underwant relatively little review. In most cases, however,
there was extensive review of the reports followed by a series
of White House meetings.
When an outside task force report was found to be of little
immediate value, the White House sometimes commissioned an in-
teragency task force to develop legislative proposals. This
apparently happened in 1967 when the Friday and Ylvisaker re-
ports were followed by the creation of interagency task forces
in education and housing, both of which had a major impact on
the development of 1968 legislation in those areas.
Agency Reactions.
We have already observed that the reaction of many departmental
and agency officials to the role of outside task forces in
policy formulation was substantially negative. The principal
objection was to the secrecy which surrounded the work of the
task forces and the substance of their reports. While most
officials recognized the rationale for secrecy, they felt that
it had consequences which were adverse to their interests. One
frequent complaint was that the reports tended to become standards
for presidential evaluation of program performance: but that
program administrators lacked access to them. According to &
USOE program official:
-26-
The task force reports are tortual exegeses
used by those who have access to them. It 10 assumed
in the higher echelons that the tack force position is
correct. The problem for us is that our performance
is evaluated in terms of the objectives set in the re-
ports, but NO do not have adequate access to them.
There is little question that the independent expert advice
and suggestions obtained from the task forces proved highly
valuable to the Johnson Administration in charting its general
policy courses. But the Administration also recognized, apparently,
that there are limits to the degree to which the President can and
should insulate himself from agency influence in policy formula-
tion. The expanded use after 1964 of interagency task forces as
vehicles for legislative program development represented an effort
to involve the agencies more effectively in Executive Office policy
development, to ease agency resentments toward the use of outside
task forces, and to promote interagency cooperation in complex
policy areas like housing and education. This form of participation
enabled the Administration to secure agency support and commitment
to its proposals without having to yield to agency domination of
their substance.
Impact on Policy.
It is, of course, impossible to measure directly the impact
which task force reports have had on public policy. Our research
suggests, however, that in many cases the basic concepts of President
Johnson's legislative program were in large part shaped by task
force recommendations. It does not appear to be mere coincidence
that a sizeable number of task force proposals ultimately became
a part of the Administration's program and were enacted, with
amendments, by Congress. Specifically, the rent supplement
-27-
program authorized by Congress in 1965 was the major recommendation
of the 1964 Wood task force; and, the model cities program enacted
in 1966 was the major proposal of the 1965 Wood task force. One
of the major innovative programs authorized in the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965, Title III, clearly originated
with the 1964 Gardner task force; 18 and, most of the recommenda-
tions of the 1966 Early Childhood task force were adopted, although
at lower funding levels than those the task force recommended.
Not all task force reports, however, automatically became part
of the President's legislative program. For example. only a few
recommendations of the 1967 Friday task force, principally the
Networks for Knowledge and the Partnership for Learning and Earning
proposals, appeared in President Johnson's 1968 education message or
the Administration's 1968 education bills. The muted impact of the
Friday task force report can be explained in part by its focus
on long-range rather than immediate problems and by the con-
straints which the Vietnam war imposed on the political and
budgetary situations. The 1966 Ylvisaker task force also had
little direct impact on policy because its recommendations
were "too radical" and because its predecessors had been quite
productive in terms of legislative accomp lishments. As one
White House staff member remarked:
The Ylvisaker report had little policy impact,
partly because it was the third in a row and the
first two had set policy. Actually It served as a
basis for the Kerner Commission report in that 1t
changed the framework from urbanism to racism. But,
-28-
I admit, that observation is mostly hindsight. We
didn't see the report as terribly important when it
came in.
Task force reports can also have a major impact through
administrative actions as well as through incorporation in the
President's legislative program. For example. the 1.966 Early
Childhood task force recommended changes in Federal welfare regu-
lations which were subsequently adopted by the agencies involved.
In addition, the possibility of task force recommendations be-
coming Administration policy is enhanced if 2. key task force
participant becomes a member of the Administration.
This, of
course, occured in the cases of John Gardner who became Secre-
tary of HEW and Robert Wood, who served as Undersecretary of HUD.
As one agency official observed:
Because they wrote the reports they are more
likely to take up the cudgels for the task
force proposals than someone else would be.
What they can't get through legislation, they
are likely to push for through administrative
changes.
Appraisal and Prospects
Through the employment of secret White House task forces,
the Johnson Administration developed a substantially altered
pattern of policy formulation and legislative program develop-
ment. The extensive, though selective, use of groups of outside
experts to identify problems and issues and generate new ideas
and approaches coupled with the frequent use of inter-
agency task forces to temper the recommendations of the out-
siders with pragmatic considerations were the basic changes. Through
them the Administration sought to expand the process of policy
-29-
formulation boyond traditional reliance on the bureaucracy to
develop most new policy proposals. The changes may constitute
another phase in the institutionalization of the Presidency,
19
but
they were not so highly routinized that they became permanent White
House routines, Given the still highly personalized nature of the
Presidency, it is by no means certain that processes within the
framework of presidential activity that involve policy formula-
tion can be quickly and indelibly institutionalized. Rather,
institutionalization is a continuous and gradual process.
While manifesting distinctly identifiable patterns, the opera-
tions of the task forces were highly flexible and adaptable to presi-
dential requirements. There are signs, however, that the
flexibility and adaptability of the task forces, at least in
housing and education, had begun to decline as their opera-
tions became increasingly systematized and that they were
tending to become elaborate instruments of incremental adjust-
ment rather than catalytic agents of change. The problem is
that a leadership technique--and that is what the task force
operation is--designed to produce policy innovation worked so
well initially that overuse may have rendered it counterpro-
ductive. After all, the scope for creative policy leadership is
limited by circumstantial factors and even the most effective
techniques can work successfully only part of the time.
It also appears to us that although the task forces were
20
an important procedural innovation, the substantive innovations
in policy for which they have been responsible are considerably
less than their advocates in the Johnson Administration
have claimed. As a Budget Bureau official acknowledged,
"task forces fail as innovators
All they do is
-30-
pull together existing things instead of coming up with new
ideas. " A staff member of a housing task force agreed: "We
didn't really come up with any innovations, nor were we particu-
larly creative." It does seem that the task forces which had
the greatest immediate impact on legislation recommended programs
appropriately
political rather than
which could more / be characterized as/intellectual breakthroughs.
For example, the rent supplement idea had been circulating for
several years, the HHFA was experimenting with major elements
of the model cities approach before the task force proposed it,
at least
and/three of the five substantive titles of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, including the all-important Title I
providing for massive aid to disadvantaged children, were pri-
marily the products of other forces in the education policy
system.
Furthermore, to the extent that task forces were made rep-
resentative through their membership, tendencies toward innova-
tion may have been mitigated. This appears likely since con-
sensus was the fundamental decision-making rule and final agree-
ment tended to represent compromise rather than creative thinking.
As one high-ranking official in the Executive Office admitted,
"it is true that with so many interests involved the result is,
in some sense, the lowest common denominator."
However, because task forces may not have been quite as in-
novative (in the sense that no one had thought of their
recommendationa before) as their proponents claimed does not
mean that essentially the same courses of action would have
-31-
been followed had they not been used. The 1deas which they
promoted may not have been entirely new, but they were not yet
embodied in presidential policies nor, in most cases were they
supported by the bureaucracy. Without outside task forces it
is not likely that the supplementary educational centers and
regional education laboratories or the rent supplements and
model cities programs would have been pushed by the Administra-
tion and authorized by Congress at the time and form that they
were. But more important than the immediate legislative con-
sequences are the long-range effects of the task force process.
They provide a means of maintaining a steady input of ideas
new to the thought processes of high-level policy-makers.
Unfortunately the consequences of this phenomenon cannot be
measured. but its significance is manifest.
On balance, we believe that the task force operation was a
significant contribution to presidential policy leadership. Many
Johnson Administrative officials who served in the Executive Office
of the President view the task force operation as a major in-
stitutional contribution. Whether it will survive is an open
question. Much depends on future Presidents; their personalities,
their attitudes toward the necessity for policy innovation and
the extent to which they employ secrecy and surprise as elements
of their leadership styles. The task force operation was peculiarly
suited to the leadership style of Lyndon B. Johnson. It fitted
-32-
nicely with his often repeated emphasis on the need for a partner-
ship between the public and private sectors, his life-long instinct
for decision-making on the basis of consensus, and his preoccupa-
tion with secrecy. 21 Viewed in another way, it was a good example
of what Theodore Lowi has called "interest group liberalism, It a
phenomenon which Lowi feels has come increasingly to characterize
American politics in the 1960's. 22 Interest group liberalism is a
philosophy which specifies that leading societal interests should
all be represented in the interior processes of policy formulation.
Future Presidents are likely to utilize those features of the
task force operation which they find compatible with their own
styles and are appropriate to their policy objectives.
AM innova-
tion-minded President would find secret outside task forces to be
most useful for purposes of broad policy planning. In this con-
text, he could employ them to identify problems. pinpoint issues
and suggest alternative solutions to them. It is likely that these
task forces would develop some new ideas independently, but more
importantly they would function to collate and bring to the atten-
tion of the President and other top policy-makers innovative and
creative thinking done elsewhere. on the other hand, such a Presi-
dent could not expect them regularly to develop the specifics of
proposed legislation. He could more appropriately assign that
function to interagency task forces working in conjunction with
policy planners in the departments and agencies. The President
would also find that outside task forces are more suitable than
-33-
public commissions for reaching out and acquiring fresh ideas
and sppresches. They do not tend to be as concerned with the
balancing of societal interests as. commissions, by their very
nature, must be. Correspondingly, however, commissions are more
appropriate for developing a consensus behind a set of policy
recommendations.
In determining whether to employ outside task forces in the
processes of policy formulation, the President who is intent on
innovation must asses the costs and gains associated with their
use. In addition to being a most promising means of generating
new ideas, outside task forces will afford him a maximum range of
options which can be kept open over a long period of time with a
minimum of energy required to defend his choices. The principal
costs are the resentments which the task forces engender in the
bureauoracy and among powerful clientele groups. These costs can
be reduced somewhat by balancing interests in selecting task forces
members, thus rendering them somewhat more like public commissions,
and by reliance on interagency task forces to review outside task
force recommendations and to take the lead in developing specific
legislative proposals. To the extent that the President takes
these counter-measures, however, he risks losing some of the por
tential gains to be derived from the use of outside task forces.
Unfortunately, our information is not sufficient and measuring
instruments lack the precision to permit a more definitive assess-
ment of such costs and gains. Whatever the goals of future Presi-
dents, it is certainly expected that they will examine carefully
-34-
the uses 32" presidential back forces during the Johnson Presidency
and that some elements of the task force operation N111 become
permanently institutionalized.
****
Footnotes
Iwe obtained our data in the course of conducting more compre-
hensive studies of the Federal policy-making processes in the areas
of housing and education. We selected those areas because, as major
sectors of President's Johnson's Great Society, substantial redis-
tributive policies have been enacted within them since 1965. (The
distinction between regulatory, distributive and redistributive
policies is Theodore J. Lowi's. See "American Business, Public
Policy. Case-Studies and Political Theory,' World Politics, 16
(1964). Redistributive policies have broad impact, produce con-
siderable conflict and tension and can result in altered relation-
ships between the Presidency, the bureaucracy and clientele groups.
A comparison of our initial findings suggested further exam-
ination of the process of formulating the President's legislative
program and of President Johnson's use of task forces.
our respondents, for this phase of the study, included five
members of the White House staff, seven Bureau of the Budget of-
ficials, and 32 department and agency officials and task force
participants.
2 The best description of this process and its development to
the point of almost total dependence on agency submission of proposals
by the early years of the Eisenhower Administration is Richard E.
Neustadt, "The Presidency and Legislation: Planning the President's
Program, American Political Science Review, 49 (1955) pp. 980-1018.
See also Neustadt's "The Presidency and Legislation: The Growth of
Central Clearance," Ibid., 48 (1954) pp. 641-670.
The classic studies of the Presidency have not examined in any
detail the process of presidential policy formulation. See, for
example, Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers, 4th
ed., (New York: New York University Press, 1957) Chapter VII;
and, E. Pendelton Herring, Presidential Leadership (New York:
Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1940). However, more recent institu-
tional analyses have begun to do SO. See Joseph E. Kallenbach,
The American Chief Executive (Now York: Harper and Row, 1966)
pp. 341-344; and, Louis W. Koenig, The Chief Executive (New York;
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964) pp. 166-183.
3 See J. Lipeer Leeper Freeman, "The Bureaucracy in Pressure Politics,"
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
Vol. 319 (1958) pp. 11-19.
4
Arthur W. Maas, "In Accord with the Program of the President,"
in Carl J. Friedrich, ed., Public Policy, Vol. 4 (1953) pp. 79-
93. Maas stated that the President needed staff in addition to
the Bureau of the Budget "to meet the 'need for positive origina-
tion at the center of broad
objectives' and policies so
that adequate 'leadership and direction' are given to the develop-
ment of /his/ program."
5 Quoted in William E. Leuchtenberg, "The Genesis of the Great
Society," The Reporter, April 21, 1966, pp. 36-39.
-36-
6see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F.
Kennedy in the White House (New York: Fawcett World Library,
1967) pp. 148-154. Texts of the reports appear in New
Frontiers of the Kennedy Administration (Washington: Public
Affairs Press, 1961).
7 For an account of the establishment of the task forces 11
1964 and their role in developing the legislative program of the
Great Society, see W. E. Leuchtenberg, op. cit.
SA sharp differentiation of the functions of policy-planning
and legislative liaison has occured on the White House staff
with the policy-planners enjoying greater influence and status.
See Thomas E. Cronin, "The Presidency and Education, Phi Delta
Kappan, February, 1968, pp. 295-299.
9 Louis Koenig's prediction, made in 1964 at the outset of the
Johnson Presidency, that the White House staff would play a re-
duced and the old-line departments a greater role in policy-
formulation has not proved correct. The reverse has occured.
OD. cit., pp. 182-183.
¹⁰This description is based on our interviews. See also the
description of the preparation of the 1968 State of the Union
message in "Formulating Presidential Program is Long Process,"
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, January 26, 1968,
pp. 111-114.
11 See Elizabeth Brenner Drew, "On Giving Onseself a Hotfoot:
Government by Commission,' Atlantic, Vol. 221, May, 1968, pp. 45-
49. In her barbed though highly perceptive article, she lists
several uses of public commissions including: to postpone action
yet be justified in insisting that you are at work on the problem;
to act as a lightning rod, drawing political heat away from the
White House; and to investigate, lay to rest, rumors and convince
the public of the validity of a particular set of facts.
A highly placed official on the White House staff commented
that "there's a hell of a lot of truth to some of the things in
Drew's article. However, in some cases we do expect new and
important things to come out of public commissions."
-37-
12
CT. Deniel Sell, "Government by Conmission," The Public
Interest.
No. 3 (1966) pp. 3-9.
13we say usually because the entire process of policy formula-
blen is flexible and somewhat unstructured. What happens in any
given case may be and often is dependent on ideosyncratic personal
and situational variables. There is a great temptation for the
political analyst to impose & more rational order on the patterns
of the governmental process than may be empirically justified.
See James M. Burns, Presidential Government (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1966) P. 143. Burns cites the highly relevant com-
ments of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., based on his experiences in
the White House during the Kennedy Administration: "Nothing in
my recent experience has been more chastening than the attempt to
penetrate into the process of decision. I shudder a little when
I think how confidently I have analyzed decisions in the ages of
Jackson and Roosevelt. traced influences, assigned motives, evaluated
roles, allocated responsibilities and, in short, transormed a dis-
dishevelled and murky evolution into a tidy and ordered trans-
action. The sad fact is that, in many cases, the basic evidence
for the historian's reconstruction of the really hard cases does
not exist--and the evidence that it does is often incomplete,
misleading or erroneous." From "The Historian and History,"
Foreign Affairs. Vol. 41 (April, 1963) pp. 491-497.
14 R. E. Neustadt, Presidential Power (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1960. passim.
15
Drew criticizes the balancing of interests on public com-
missions on the ground that it tends to immobilize them. Op. cit.,
P. 47. Bell is more sympathetic toward the representational
aspects of commissions, op. cit. P. 7.
16
These meetings, which usually lasted for one or two days,
were held on 2 monthly or bimonthly basis.
17
Sce Drew, OP. cit.
18
There was a considerable difference of opinion among our
respondents regarding the impact of the Gardner task force on
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Those individuals
who commented from the perspective of the bureaucracy--USOE-HEW-
asserted that aside from Title III, the task force functioned
only to crystalize ideas that had been circulating for some time
and to legitimize policy planning done elsewhere in the educa-
tional policy-making system. on the other hand, observers in
the Executive Office of the President claimed that Title IV, and
to a considerable extent Title I, owed their existence to the
task force. While it is-not possible to measure the amount of
variance in policy for which the task force accounted, it seems
clear that it was a variable of considerable significance. See
Stephen K. Bailey and Edith K. Mosher, ESEA: The Office of Educa-
tion Administers a Law (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968)
PP. 39-42.
On the difficulty of tracing the origins of new policies, see
Adam Yarmolinsky, "Ideas into Programs," The Public Interest No. 2
(1966) pp. 70-77.
-38-
19
Cf. Lester G. Seligman, "Presidential Leadership: The
Imer Circle and Institutionalization," Journal of Politics,
Vol. 18 (1956). PP. 410-426.
20
The problem of defining innovation is a familiar one which
does not lend itself to any easy solution. As we view it, policy
innovation includes the conception of ideas as well as giving sub-
stance and form to them. Cf. Victor A. Thompson, "Bureaucracy
and Innovation, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 10,
(June, 1.965) pp. 1-20. Thompson defines innovation as "the gen-
eration, acceptance, and implementation of new ideas, products or
services."
21
See Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson:
The Exercise of Power (New York: New American Library, 1966).
22T. J. Lowi, "The Public Philosophy: Interest-Group
Liberalism," American Political Science Review, Vol. 61
(1967) pp. 5-24.