Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The institutional presidency began during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945). Realizing that he needed immediate assistance to carry out his constitutional role as chief administrator and the need for managerial help in implementing the New Deal, Roosevelt appointed Louis Brownlow, Charles Merriam, and Luther Gulick in March 1936 as the President's Committee on Administrative Management – more commonly known as the Brownlow Committee. The establishment of this Committee reflected Roosevelt's understanding that he needed additional aides and assistants to carry out the duties of his office. While he was not the first American president to complain about an ever-increasing workload and the need for additional staff, he understood that what Matthew Dickinson has called “a jerry-rigged administrative system” composed of an expanded Cabinet and staff secretariat, institutional agencies such as the Bureau of the Budget, White House aides supplemented by other government officials “detailed” to the White House, and his unique assortment of friends, political operatives, and other advisers from the public and private sectors, often led to administrative chaos ( Dickinson 1996 : 45). Although the Brownlow Committee had finished its work in early January 1937 and was approved by President Roosevelt, Congress was slow to act. Concerned more about the performance of the ... log in or subscribe to read full text