Sunday, December 13, 1998

We need the Postmaster General back

By Dale McFeatters

WASHINGTON -- Let's face it. Patronage, perks and boodle are inseparable from politics, always were, always will be.

If you can't reward your old friends -- and let your new friends reward you -- why go through the hassle and humiliation of running for office? The problem comes when politicians, like those in the Clinton administration, deny these basic needs out of high-mindedness or wrongheadedness or, as it so often happens, both.

That's why we have the long-running, insanely complicated campaign finance scandal that, left unchecked, may inflict even further "reforms" on the body politic.

The problem is actually simple. The president needs in his Cabinet a chief political whiphand who, whatever his title, is known as the "go-to guy" to channel campaign donations, parcel out administration jobs and otherwise see that the largesse of high office is fairly and effectively spread around.

The process can be tarted up with fancy names: Giving jobs to friends is "attracting the highest quality people to the administration" and soliciting campaign contributions is "offering an opportunity to participate in the democratic process." It's still patronage, perks and boodle, and anybody who doesn't believe it has never witnessed "the best and brightest" battle over a preferred White House parking space.

Where things inevitably go wrong is when presidents install their top political operative in the wrong Cabinet post. President Clinton made his political whiphand, Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce, a post fraught with potential conflict of interest. Indeed, until his death in a plane crash, Brown was the target of a special prosecutor's investigation.

President Bush made Jim Baker his Secretary of State and lasted only one term. President Reagan's second term went awry when he sent his most trusted political lieutenant, Ed Meese, to the Justice Department. President Carter left his, Charlie Kirbo, back in Atlanta, and he, too, lasted only one term.

At one time in American history, the problem of who in the Cabinet handles the president's political dirty work had been solved satisfactorily, but the solution fell victim to "reform." That was in 1970 when the independent U.S. Postal Service was created.

Traditionally, the Postmaster General took care of all the president's political needs. Most famous of all was Jim Farley, who engineered Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 and 1936 election years and was his postmaster general for eight years. Farley felt Roosevelt's unprecedented decision to run for a third term unfairly clogged the avenues of advancement, and he ran against his old boss, with unhappy results.

Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson all installed their political advisers in the postmaster general's job. President Nixon broke with custom and made his campaign manager, John Mitchell, the attorney general. Mitchell went to jail, and Nixon didn't fare too well, either.

The postmaster general's job was ideal cover. The Post Office basically ran itself and had lots of jobs to pass out. The PMG had perhaps the most lavish office in Washington, the better to entertain, cajole and threaten -- and not visiting philatelists, either. His headquarters was only a short walk from the White House and adjoined the Old Post Office, one of downtown Washington's more spectacular building.

Then came one of those dreaded waves of "reform" that afflicted the '70s.

The Post Office became the quasi-governmental Postal Service and shipped across town to a nondescript office building. The postmaster general is no longer in the Cabinet. The Old Post Office is now a food court. And the president is in trouble.

Lloyd Cutler, a Washington wise man who in a more enlightened age might have been Clinton's postmaster general, quoted a British politician of the 1830s, whom he swears is real -- and if he isn't, should be -- in regard to the current Washington political mess:

"Reform? Reform? Why do we need reform? Things are bad enough as they are."

Exactly.

Scripps Howard News Service