melissa-owens #2

INSTRUCTIONS: In this activity, you assume the role of president of an engineering company who is considering the job of assistant secretary of defense. You will review the pros and cons of taking the position, cast your vote and then provide a written explanation of your decision.

INTRODUCTION: To: Dr. Leah Raina Titanium, president of Cybersystems Engineering

From: Colin Rob Scott, secretary of defense

Subject: Becoming an assistant secretary of defense

As both secretary and a dear old college buddy of yours, I write again to express my hope that you will accept the president’s call to service. We all desperately want you aboard. Yes, conflict-of-interest laws will require you to sell your stock in your present company and drop out of its generous pension plan. No, the government won’t even pay moving costs. And once you leave office, you will be barred for life from lobbying the executive branch on matters in which you were directly involved while in office, and you will be barred for two years from lobbying on matters that were under your general official authority. Your other concerns have teeth, too, but let me help you weigh your options.

To Consider:

Four months into the new administration, hundreds of assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary positions remain unfilled. In 1960 the total number of presidential political appointees was just 450. Today the total is closer to 3,000, but sheer growth is not the whole story. Rather, say experts on federal bureaucracy, plum public service posts go unfilled because the jobs have become so unrewarding, even punishing. 

Arguments for:

1. I hate to preach, but it is one’s duty to serve one’s country when called. Your sacrifice would honor your family and benefit your fellow Americans for years to come.

2. As an accomplished professional and the head of a company that has done business with the government, you could help the president succeed in reforming the department so that it works better and costs less.

2. Despite the restrictions, you could resume your career once your public service was complete.

Arguments against:

1. Since you will have to be confirmed by the Senate, your life will be put under a microscope, and everything (even some of our old college mischief together) will be fair game for congressional staffers and reporters.

2. You will face hundreds of rules telling you what you can’t do and scores of members of Congress and their staffs telling you what you should do. Longtime friends will get mad at you for not doing them favors. The president will demand loyalty. The press will pounce on your every mistake, real or imagined.

2. Given the federal limits on whom in the government you can deal with after you leave office, your job at Cybersystems may well suffer.

Additional Research:

The following links present articles that outline the positive and negative aspects to working for the government. Read one pro article and one con article and then move onto the next part of the activity.

Pro:

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44083.pdf

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/02/28/want-to-work-in-the-white-house/

Con:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-senate-and-executive-branch-appointments-an-obstacle-course-on-capitol-hill/

http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/light/2011/01/the-appointments-outrage.html

Will you accept the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense? Why?