Managing the Presidency: The Reorganization of the Department of State

• In Event: Executive Power and Bureaucratic Politics

Abstract

The foundation by President William Howard Taft of a managerial style and use of presidential power necessary to meet twentieth century challenges wrought by foreign affairs has gone unrecognized. In his first annual message to Congress (December 1909), he focused on the three executive departments solely related to foreign policy – State, Navy, and War. Taft's reorganization of the executive was to have long term political impact, underpinning a new managerialism in foreign affairs and an expansion of the executive branch that he sought to secure for his successors. In this way, President Taft imagined a new executive branch and renovated the institution, specifically to make it better (more economic and efficient), although not more democratic.
Taft’s contribution to presidential power, especially through reorganization, goes beyond the creation and recommendations of his Commission on Economy and Efficiency. Forgotten is the unique background he brought to foreign policy and how, through reorganization, Taft expressed his managerial style and extended his control over executive departments. His experience, including as governor-general of the Philippines, gave him a well-grounded belief in the need for executive authority and led him to trust men of similar professional experience. Following on from his experience as Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of war, Taft rode the wave of acceptance and rising public expectations on executive action to act without Congress.
I focus on how Taft set up the dynamics of his administration's foreign policy and his role as diplomat in chief, placing him at the nexus within the context of this progressive moment that sought to make the federal government more responsive to the country’s growing needs. This includes an analysis of how Taft managed appointments and utilized experts in inter-departmental relations to share knowledge and policy expertise within the federal bureaucracy. While his commission on reorganization and its numerous reports have received some scholarly attention, the greater impact Taft had on the executive branch was the changes he actually established unilaterally in his foreign policy departments of State, Navy, and War that would prove critical in a few years with the advent of World War One. Taft’s actions, undemocratic as they might be, were more resilient in the long term.
In Taft’s State Department, Secretary Philander Knox, with whom Taft had a close relationship, and Assistant Secretary Francis Mairs Huntington-Wilson, who maintained surviving records on reorganization, served throughout the administration. Attaining what government reforms he could unilaterally, Taft also benefited from Knox and Wilson overseeing the establishment of geographic divisions within the department that channeled expertise. As the modern executive branch was already well beyond the scope for a single man to micro-manage anything beyond a few prioritized policies, President Taft chose men who shared his belief in reorganization and who he could trust to deliver it within their departments.
Despite the fear of backsliding on the reorganization he had brought about and the reality later described, for example, by an infuriated Wilson, the changes undertaken by President Taft were significant. At the time, Taft demonstrated the extent and scope of changes achievable through the unilateral will of an executive that remained limited by Congress. His reorganization symbolized the administrative arm of his managerial style and supported and enabled the establishment of his chosen policies.
He did not get credit at the time or in retrospect, but Taft's reorganization and the groundwork laid by his commission would prove prescient in establishing the full-blown managerial presidency and executive bureaucracy that emerged by the mid-twentieth century. Taft sought to utilize his departments to face the challenges brought by the twentieth century and America's newfound imperial status in the most efficient way possible. Equally, it was foreign policy that would secure an expanded, reorganized executive branch to support the burgeoning managerial presidency in the nuclear age.

Author

• Laura Ellyn Smith, Arizona State University