Why is the cabinet important to the office of the president

Each Cabinet member is the head of an executive department of the government. Usually, they meet together once a week or every other week. This room faces the Rose Garden and is a beautiful room furnished with draperies, chandeliers, and leather chairs. President George Washington developed the Cabinet system by asking the heads of the existing three executive departments and the Attorney General to meet with him on a regular basis to discuss issues of importance and to report on their department's work.

The formation of departments is mentioned in Article 2 Section 2 of our Constitution "he may require the opinion in writing of the principal officer in each of the executive departments upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices At this time, we now have 15 executive departments.

Breadcrumb Harry S. Staffers have access to the president and seem to impose their personal preferences on the cabinet. To illustrate this dynamic, when President Obama came to office, he initially intended to delegate legal policy on detainees at Guantanamo to his attorney general and friend, Eric Holder. Holder accepted the position with the understanding that he would make legal decisions independently of the White House, though of course the president would have the final say.

In delegating some of the key legal decisions regarding detainee policy to Attorney General Holder, President Obama wanted to be seen as not letting politics interfere with legal principles. Obama told Holder to make legal decisions on the merits of the law rather than on political grounds. The decision caused a political uproar, with congressional leaders threatening legislation to mandate military commissions at Guantanamo and not in the continental United States.

Thus President Obama continued the 20 th century trend of centralizing control in the White House staff, ensuring the frustration of cabinet secretaries. The challenge is to maintain a healthy balance between too much centralization and the opposite problem of lack of coordination of policy making and implementation in departments and agencies.

Thus, by the late 20 th century, major policy functions that used to be performed outside the White House were now integrated into the White House: Domestic policy development that had been done in the policy shops and by the staffs of departmental secretaries was now dominated by the White House domestic policy staff.

National Security policy advice and planning had moved from the Departments of State and Defense into an expanded National Security Council staff. Legal advice to the president, which had been dominated by the Department of Justice, was now provided by the White House Counsel and a team of White House lawyers. Additionally, political functions that had previously been performed by the political parties and in Congress were now located in the White House: Recruitment of political appointees, which had been dominated by political parties and heavily influenced by members of Congress was now centralized in the Office of Presidential Personnel, with a large staff during transitions and a significant role throughout a presidential administration.

Outreach to interest groups, which had been done by political parties, was now conducted by the Office of Public Liaison in the White House. Yes, they were obviously more used to heat than we were, but still, it's unpleasant. Then they go back the next day, and Hamilton does it again. He goes on for another 45 minutes. You can just tell that these conflicts suits Washington because he gets all perspectives, but, depending on who was in the cabinet, sometimes they found it incredibly uncomfortable.

Later on in his administration, Washington reduced the number of meetings; he felt like he didn't need them anymore. He wanted individual advice, but it really left a legacy that the president would meet with the cabinet as he saw fit, and they were not entitled to be a part of the decision-making process. Yours is the first history of the cabinet in a long time, really long time, right?

Since the early 20th century? Henry Barrett Lennard wrote a book in that was looking at what the legislative origins were for each of the executive branch departments.

When people in the s started writing about where executive power came from, and when did it really emerge, they were coming from this perspective of the New Deal and the military-industrial complex. By looking at the cabinet's support for executive power as opposed to competing with the president for authority, I found that Washington and the cabinet made a conscious decision to try and carve out presidential authority over key areas of policy, diplomatic policy, in particular, domestic policy in times of crises.

It didn't have to go that way had Washington taken a much more hands-off approach. Sometimes, if I had an idea about something, I would start with a word search, and then I branch off from there. One of the things that I discovered using that word search is that during his presidency, Washington refused to use the word cabinet.

He obviously knew what it was. It was in the political lexicon. The minute he retires, he says, "John Adams' cabinet," so he was very familiar with this framework, but for some reason, and I have some hypotheses, he refused to use it.

That is something that had I just been flipping through a volume, I might not have been able to pick up on. We tend to think about the early United States as being a very Article I government—Congress-led-- but what you're showing is really this very powerful executive right from the beginning.

Part of it was their proclivities from their time during the war, but it also was a reflection of 18 th -century society.

Congress was only in session for a short part of the year. Once they left, it was really hard to get them back. So they often just weren't around, and Washington and the cabinet felt like they couldn't wait for them to come back to make a decision. In some ways, it was their natural inclination. In some ways, it was a product of what life looked like. What made the Whiskey Rebellion a compelling example for you? One of them is on homemade or home distilled whiskey. This makes a lot of good political sense.

It doesn't tax imports coming in from other nations, so it's not going to cause a diplomatic issue. It's not taxed on property, so people who owned enslaved laborers or had very large tracts of land weren't going to be targeted. It wasn't a head tax, so it wasn't unfairly burdensome on the poor. It was a direct tax, so it's not like a tax collector had to go to each home inflected. It was a very good political decision, except that it tended to unfairly target people in places like western Pennsylvania, Kentucky and North Carolina.

From the beginning of the tax, Kentucky just refused to recognize it. They wouldn't put anyone in office who supported the tax, and they wouldn't bring any cases forward against tax evasion. North Carolinians also protested, but the real problem was Pennsylvania. I think Pennsylvania was so problematic because it was where the seat of government was in Philadelphia , and one of the cradles of liberty where the Continental Congress had met, where the Declaration of Independence had been written, all of these things.

By , the situation had really escalated when the rebels burned down the house of John Neville, the local tax inspector. Edmund Randolph, who was the secretary of state at the time, advocated for sending out negotiators first to try and come up with a peaceful solution.

Secretary of War Henry Knox and Hamilton advocated for sending troops out immediately. The attorney general, William Bradford, advocated for sending negotiators out but getting the troops ready if the negotiations failed and this was what Washington did. It was good politics to appear to be doing everything in their power to avoid the military, but one of the really interesting parts of this whole incident is Washington's negotiations with Pennsylvania officials.

The governor of Pennsylvania, Thomas Mifflin, had been one of Washington's aides de damp, but they had a falling out. When Washington is president, they continue to squabble over a bunch of different things.