Nixon's Administrative Presidency Revisited: Aberration or Watershed?

Abstract

On 5 January 1973, one month after his reelection to a second term, Richard Nixon described for Congress a major restructuring of his cabinet and White House staff. Nixon began by emphasizing his determination to “revitalize and streamline the Federal Government in preparation for America's third century,” a reference to his effort of the preceding two years to replace seven domestic executive departments and several agencies with four “superdepartments”: a Department of Natural Resources, a Department of Community Development, a Department of Economic Affairs, and a Department of Human Resources. The failure of Congress to report out of committee any of the four bills Nixon submitted in March 1971 to create these superdepartments was now prompting the president to act unilaterally to “reorder … the timeworn and in many cases obsolete relationships among top staff and line officials” in an effort to realize “the broadening of policy perspectives on the part of top managers and advisers” and improvements in “managerial effectiveness” he had hoped to achieve through comprehensive reorganization of the executive branch.