Reforming the Executive Branch

Public Sector CEOs

When it comes to most federal and state governments, the chief executive officer is typically chosen via an election. And the election process in the US typically goes something like this:

• The two primary political parties select candidates to run in the election. One of the candidates is usually the current chief executive officer (i.e., the incumbent).

• Each candidate then runs slanderous ads about the other party's candidate along with images of themselves as some kind of savior figure.

• The citizens then vote for the candidate they find least distasteful.

• After the votes are tallied, each candidate gets to wage a legal battle to have some of the votes of the other candidate tossed out for minor technical reasons.

• Eventually, after all the legal challenges have been resolved, a winner is announced.

• The winner then gets to fire government employees that are not on their team and hire replacements who are. They also get to hand out government contracts to those who helped bankroll their election campaign. And, as an added perk, they get to profit from insider trading (which is why many elected officials become multimillionaires after being elected despite receiving relatively modest salaries for their government service).

• The election process is then repeated periodically so that the loser gets another chance--albeit usually a pretty slim one--to be the winner. It is only fair, after all.

Party All the Time

As for the major political parties, voters, depending largely on where they live and how wealthy they are, typically root for either the red team or the blue team. Kind of like choosing between the White Sox and the Cubs.

There's also a tiny minority of voters that invariably root for the green team. But everyone recognizes them as a bunch of wierdos. And they usually are pretty quiet and tend to keep to themselves out of fear of being ostracized. So, in the final analysis, it is kind of like they don't exist.

And while many voters proudly don their team's jerseys and baseball caps, there are also a number that are afraid to do so for fear of being seen as a loser. They are called "undecided voters". And they usually side with the candidate that appears more likely to win an election. That way, when the more popular candidate does win, they can proudly announce that they voted for the winner.

But what is really kind of funny is that, just like sports fanatics, the voters that boastfully claim to be on the red team or the blue team really aren't. As George Carlin once famously quipped, "It's a big club, and you ain't in it". They are simply fans who have deluded themselves into thinking they are "on the team". And the sad truth is that the true members of the political party simply see them as "potential donors" and "guaranteed votes". But we can just think of them as posers.

Membership Has Its Privileges

You see, when it comes to political parties, you do not get to "wear the jacket" unless you have been groomed to be a candidate in an election. And the grooming process typically requires that you find yourself a current party member to be your mentor and then do whatever it takes to get them to accept you as one of their apprentices. And "by anything", I mean anything.

However, even if the day eventually does come when you are presented with your very own "jacket", you will not exactly be free to do whatever you want to do. There is, after all, a hierarchy. A pecking order. And dues to be paid.

As a wearer of "the jacket", you have to be loyal to those at the top of the hierarchy. If they ask you to jump, you need to respond, "how high?". And you have to recognize that a time may eventually come when they will tell you to throw yourself on your own sword; and you better be willing to do it. You see, the queen bee must survive regardless of the cost, or the drones will all perish.

And what exactly is the nectar that feeds the hive and its members? Campaign contributions, obviously. So, as a loyal member of the party, you better not let that other hive gain control of your hive's food supply. Like whales at a casino, you need to keep your campaign donors happy. And always remember, happy campaign donors equate to a happy queen bee. And a happy queen bee equates to a happy hive.

It's The Issues, Baby

Shifting our attention away from politicians and back to voters, most voters pretend to care about something called "issues". It is "the issues" that get them to jump on the band wagon for either the red team or the blue team.

Such issues often include things like "the right to have an abortion". Of course, that particular issue actually directly impacts only a relatively small number of voters as over half the population cannot even get pregnant and many of those that can are living a chaste life (whether they want to or not) or are on the pill. But, nevertheless, defending or denying such highly contested "right" has become the battle cry for a huge swath of voters. And regardless of which side of the issue you land on, you are guaranteed to be seen as a villain by half the population.

Of course, for a few people a key issue is, as James Carville once said, "the economy stupid".

But, if we are to be perfectly honest, no one actually knows what that means. They know "the economy" has something to do with some statistics published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and some rates set by the Federal Reserve Board. However, even economists are generally confused about how the jigsaw pieces of "the economy" actually come together.

What actually matters to voters is not the economy overall. It's whether either they or their significant other were recently laid off by their shitty employer or whether the amount in their 401K account went up or down. And some of them are simply pissed off because their wages have not risen as fast as their food costs and rent, which they mostly blame on their shitty employer. So, when "the economy" is "the issue", most voters typically either blame their shitty employer for having not given them a bigger cost of living increase or vote for "the other guy" (the candidate that is not the incumbent in the current election).

To be clear, there is usually only one cause célèbre that drives a person to side with either the red team or the blue team. Unfortunately, it really doesn't matter what that single, all-important issue is. That is because neither the red team nor the blue team is going to give the voters what they really need or want. And their daily lives are not going to change dramatically for the better when "their guy" gets elected. It will just seem that way.

Despite that sobering fact, voters continue to root for their team. And when their team gets a win, they become convinced that their world has suddenly transformed for the better. In fact, for such voters, it can seem as though the sun has finally risen and chased away the darkness and gloom and everything around them has started to glow.

And why is that? It is because when we delude ourselves into believing that we have won and now have power, heroin-like endorphins flood our helpless little primate brains.

Checks and Balances

To be absolutely clear, the reason things will never improve dramatically for the average voter, regardless of who gets elected, is because of something called "checks and balances".

The game of "checks and balances" is not what you were led to believe by your high school social studies teacher. Its true purpose is not to ensure that each branch of the government will not stray from its mission. Rather, it is our political system's way of ensuring that the only concerns that actually ever get addressed by the government are the concerns of the major party donors. And the key to the "checks and balances" game lies in the fact that elected officials can, whenever necessary, point their finger at the other team and loudly proclaim, "Those scumbags are the ones to blame for why you are not getting what you need or want!"

Want quality healthcare without the fear of massive bills piling up on your kitchen table? Not going to happen. Want free daycare so you can return to your job after having a child? Not going to happen. Want your taxes and living expenses to actually go down for a change? Not going to happen. Want to not worry about having to find another job if your shitty employer decides to lay you off next week? Not going to happen.

In fact, if you want any of those things, you might want to think about moving to Sweden.

The Fortunate Few

But, of course, for a few fortunate members of the electorate, the government does always seem to come through. Not many, mind you. But a few.

Did I hear you say you need massive government subsidies to help pay for a new stadium for your sports team? Let's talk about it; after all, everybody likes to go to a sports event once in a while to forget about their crappy life. And even if they can't afford a ticket, they can at least imagine someday getting one. Am I right?

You say you took huge losses as a result of some extremely risky investments you made? And you say your misfortune is going to turn into everyone's misfortune if something isn't done about it? Not a problem. The government is here for you. We have your back.

You say your stock price has tumbled this past quarter because your revenue from military hardware sales is down sharply? Not a problem. Our overseas staff can help identify new markets for your products and expand your penetration in existing ones. And we can even help provide financing options for your new and existing customers.

Defining the Problem

Now, at this point you might be thinking, Thanks for pointing out what a crappy world we live in, asshole. So, what is your proposed solution? And, so, I will tell you what it is. But first we need to identify the root of the problem. And it all boils down to how we hire and fire our government executives.

As any business owner will tell you, hiring a new employee is a lot harder than the decision to fire an existing employee. Hiring a new employee requires posting a job vacancy, waiting for a large number of applicants to respond to the post, carefully scrutinizing each applicant's self-declared skillsets and experience to determine if they can actually do the job, filtering out the applicants that likely cannot do the job, interviewing the remaining applicants to see if any should be rejected, identifying which of the remaining applicants appears most likely to be willing to perform the job at the lowest wage or salary, contacting the selected applicant's references to determine if the applicant had lied in their application, and then putting out a job offer to the selectee. And then, assuming the selectee accepts the job offer, you then have to onboard them, train them, and then continue to monitor them closely until you are confident that they are performing the job as desired.

In contrast, the decision to fire an employee is usually pretty easy and swift. After all, you generally fire an employee either when you realize (1) they are not doing their job well and not likely going to improve or (2) they are stealing from your business. And, in either of those cases, you usually have clear evidence that informs your decision.

With regard to hiring employees, there are also a few things that you, as the owner of a business, would almost certainly never do. For example, you would most likely never rehire someone you previously fired for poor performance or theft. Nor would you hire someone based on their having satisfied only one of multiple requirements for a job. Additionally, you would never impose an arbitrary limit on the number of candidates you can choose from; rather, you would try to maximize the number.

As for firing employees, the fact that you hired an employee doesn't mean you have a lifelong obligation to retain them. Hiring is based on trust. And when that trust is violated in any way, you need to be willing to severe your ties.

Obviously, if you are smart, though, you wouldn't casually fire someone who has been doing a great job simply to see if someone else can do their job better. That is particularly true if you have invested significant resources into training an employee to perform a job.

And just as you need to be able to trust your employees, they need to be able to trust that you won't fire them on a whim or for some trivial reason. Trust is, after all, a two-way street.

So, what does the hiring and firing of employees in the private sector have to do with the way we hire and fire government executives? Good question. Glad you asked it.

Businesses are results driven. The hiring and firing processes employed by a business are specifically designed to improve the business's results. That improvement could be in terms of product and/or service quality. It could be in terms of increased sales or output. It could be in terms of reduced cost or waste. Or it could be something else altogether. But whatever the desired objective is, the hiring and firing processes of a business will either achieve the objective, or those who oversee the hiring and firing processes will be punished. It's called consequences.

In contrast, the hiring and firing of executives in the public sector pretends to be results driven, but it isn't. Instead, it is a popularity contest that has no relationship to actual results. A great executive in the public sector, one who is honest and achieving great results, can be canned simply because they have expressed an unpopular opinion related to some social issue, like the right to have abortions, that has little or nothing to do with their job. And a crappy executive, one who has been dishonest and has caused far more harm than good, will often be able to keep their job simply because of the way they look, the sound of their name, and/or the color of the cap and jersey they happen to be wearing.

In the public arena, there are also really no direct consequences for electing a bad politician. No voter is going to be fired or penalized for their bad choice. Instead, those that elected an incumbent are going to swear that the incumbent is doing a bang-up job while the rest will swear the incumbent sucks. And the "undecided voters" are, as usual, going to waffle between the two primary candidates depending on which way the wind happens to be blowing.

Making matters worse, the political parties function kind of like rival labor unions, and it is they, the political parties, that decide which candidates the voters get to choose from. Note that no business in the private sector would survive long if, when replacing a fired employee, it was forced to choose between two job candidates preselected by rival labor unions that almost certainly do not share the same objectives as the business. Yet, for some strange reason, we think that that is perfectly acceptable when it comes to hiring our government executives.

So, to be clear, the reason why we typically have lousy outcomes in the public sector when hiring government executives is because we imagine our government to be something uniquely different from a business enterprise when in fact it isn't. Just like a business, the purpose of our government is to provide us with essential goods and services. And while we might be the business's customers, we are also its shareholders. And we need to act more like shareholders and less like customers of some sort of uncaring monopoly.

But exactly what does that mean?

The Private Sector Process

To answer that, we need to take a closer look at how CEOs are hired in the private sector.

When compared, the selection of CEOs in the private sector is quite different from the selection process of CEOs in the public sector. That is because hiring a competent CEO for a business is essential for guaranteeing the financial well-being of the investors and other stakeholders. In contrast, hiring in the public sector tends to be more like a poker game played between the two dominant political parties, where the objective of the game is simply to collect as many chips as possible for yourself and your team while keeping the public pacified.

In most public companies, the company's board of directors selects a hiring committee, The hiring committee typically consist of five to seven trusted representatives, and it is tasked with drawing up a large list of candidates, filtering the list based on assessments and interviews of each candidate, and then making the final selection.

Note that, unlike in the public sector, the shareholders of a corporation do not simply vote on job candidates offered up by third party organizations. There is no carnival like atmosphere. No negative campaign ads. Instead, potential candidates for a CEO position typically are carefully screened by a team that fully understand the requirements and duties of the CEO position and perform the selection process on behalf of the shareholders. As employees of the company, the members of such teams know that if they fail to select the best possible candidate for the job, they could all lose their jobs with the company. So, they typically take their role in the selection process very seriously.

The Proposed Fix

So, given what we know about hiring and firing in the private sector, how could we make the executive branch of the federal government more effective?

It involves 5 steps.

Step 1: Deconstruct the executive branch.

Today, the executive branch is, for the most part, one giant, do-everything corporation overseen by a single elected official. Instead, the executive branch could and should consist of dozens of independent agencies, each with its own board of directors, CEO, charter, and mission. Thus, the Federal Elections Commission would be an independent agency, the Department of Justice would be an independent agency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be an independent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would be an independent agency, etc. And each independent agency would have a precisely defined mission, like "defend the nation from foreign threats" or "ensure fair and free elections".

Step 2: Every year or so, let the public have the opportunity to fire any agency CEO it believes is not doing his or her job well.

Depending on the agency, either (1) the nation's citizens could vote in a public referendum, or (2) their elected representatives in Congress could take a vote on their behalf.

Step 3: Let each agency's board of directors establish its own CEO selection committee.

Each agency's CEO selection committee would then function like the CEO selection committee of any major corporation.

Step 4: Congress could establish its own executive board selection committee (EBSC) to select individuals to serve as directors on each agency's board of directors.

Ranked choice voting and multicandidate elections could be used to elect the members of Congress's EBSC. Doing so would help ensure proportionate representation of all parties on the EBSC.

Step 5: Congress could establish rules and procedures for recalling any director serving on any of the agency boards of directors.

Note that such rules and procedures would specify how Congress would recall agency directors. They would not dictate when Congress could recall a director that is not performing as desired.

One Final Question

The proposed reforms would more closely align the public sector CEO selection process with that in the private sector. They would also ensure that the CEOs of the executive branch agencies would remain highly responsive to the needs and desires of the nation's citizens. And one can be pretty confident that having more competent, more responsive public servants would ultimately lead to substantially better outcomes for the public at large.

The only remaining question is how to implement the changes.

Clearly the President of the United States would probably be the last person to sign on to such a radical transformation of the executive branch. After all, hiring and firing government executives is a huge part of what the president does. The proposed reforms would effectively strip the president of those functions and, as a result, could potentially lead to the dissolution of the office of the president. And that is probably the last thing a president would want to do. Right?

But, then again, presidents are not presidents forever. And the president that comes after the current president won't necessarily be their clone or puppet. More importantly perhaps, if the current president turned out to be the last president and they, as President of the United States, championed a huge, positive transformation of the executive branch, they would surely go down in history as one of the greatest presidents, if not the greatest president, that ever lived. And isn't that what every president really wants: to be remembered as the greatest president that ever lived? So perhaps it isn't unthinkable that a president could sign onto such a plan after all.

Then perhaps it would seem that the question falls to those who represent us in Congress. And while I suspect the vast majority would initially oppose the proposed reforms, I also suspect that each member of Congress would probably eventually acquiesce to the reforms if their own job was on the line. So then, perhaps, on second thought, maybe they would not constitute a roadblock to such reforms either, at least in the long term.

So, it looks like it comes down to us, the voters. Either we band together and make it happen, or we accept the status quo: a government that serves special interests and not us. It's our choice. In fact, it has always been our choice. And that is the real beauty of having a democracy, provided, of course, that you know what to do with it.

So, in a very real sense it's your choice. And all you have to do is make up your mind.

So, tell me, what's it going to be?

Or, better yet, tell your elected representatives.